Being Henry Gale
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: The events of the Henry Gale episodes, from inside Ben Linus' head. Because who wouldn't want to be inside his head while he's being tortured and manipulating people at the same time? Rated T for details of what goes on in the armory.
1. The Net

**Author's Note: I am endlessly fascinated by the razor-sharp intelligence of Ben Linus' brain, the way he controls everything from positions of the greatest weakness. I wanted to examine how he could play Henry Gale so brilliantly.**

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><p><em>The Net<em>

So, he didn't mean to get caught in a net. The plan had been, walk across the Island and come in as bedraggled as possible to the plane crash survivors' camp with his tale of ballooning and wife dying and the odd pain in his back. They were unlikely to suspect him. He was small and could look very, very meek, if necessary. True, they had killed both Ethan and Goodwin, but he was better at this than either of them. All he needed to do was evaluate whether he could easily earn Shephard's trust or would need to have him kidnapped and decide on the best way to do so without bringing the survivors down on their heads.

And then, like a fool, he'd stepped into a trap. You would think that after sixteen years, he'd know how to avoid all of Rousseau's traps. But the French woman, while insane, was unendingly creative and clever. He should know. He saw the same thing in Alex.

Well, either he could get out of this himself, or he could use it to his advantage in an unplanned manner. He _could_ get out of it. He hid quite a bit of strength and agility in his small, not-so-slim-anymore body. Though he lived in a nice little yellow house like anyone back in the Real World, he lived on an Island with people who had once been called Hostiles, who had taken out American Marines, who had waged successful war against the invading Dharma Initiative (thanks to him, their man on the inside), and who held regular combat training. More, he _led_ them. There were very few of his people who could best him in a fight he intended to win, though it was more because of his brain than because of his body. Richard was one of them, but he had come very close to beating him in their last bout. Goodwin had also been one of them. It was only one of several reasons why Goodwin was now dead.

Needless to say, he would have no problem getting out of a net. But being in a net could be very, very useful. If there was one thing he could thank his father for, it would be for teaching him how to turn a bad situation to his advantage. There had come a time when he'd stopped thinking like a victim in the middle of one of his father's beatings and started thinking of ways that a beating could be an asset. He'd learned to control them rather than letting them control him. He'd learned that his brain was more powerful than his father's fists. That was the day he'd stopped being afraid of pain.

The question was whether staying in the net would be more advantageous than walking into the survivors' camp on his own. He decided to wait and see. Every once in a while he liked to let a situation play out and see where it led. The Island had ways of bringing situations to the right point, and he always knew what to do with them then. He and the Island had a special relationship.

It was only moments later that the tall brown-haired woman stepped out of the underbrush silently and gazed up at him. He lolled in the net, pretending to be unconscious. He had never seen this woman in sixteen years, though she had plagued his life every one of them. It was impossible that she should recognize him as the shadowy figure who had stepped into her camp and taken—rescued, he told himself—her child. Goodness only knew what she would think of him in her crazed, cunning brain. He had not, however, walked across the Island to investigate Rousseau. He might have to kill her. Really, he should have killed her that night. It would have saved a lot of trouble over the last sixteen years. But he'd been sentimental then. If he could go back in time and have a talk with his younger self, he would probably strike him across the face for his stupidity.

Rousseau stared up at him for longer than was necessary and then turned and walked away. Now was the time to escape, if he was going to, inch his way up the net to the top and push out between the vines connecting it to the tree, but he didn't. _Wait and see,_ the Island told him. Probably it wasn't the Island but only his own well-honed instincts, but the Island had given him those.

_And cancer,_ something in the back of his head whispered.

_And a spinal surgeon,_ he countered.

He waited, spinning plans like nets of his own. The net was very uncomfortable, but discomfort was incidental. He had a plan to deal with Rousseau, a plan to deal with whatever or whomever she came back with. He had any number of variations on Henry Gale to play, depending on the circumstances.

He wouldn't play the Henry Gale they found on the beach. He'd been a tall, handsome, strong, Black man, not a short, soft-looking, odd-looking, pasty-despite-Island-life man. If the physicality was wrong, you couldn't play the part. He'd invented a Henry Gale who suited him, right down to the self-deprecating quips about his job. The Henry Gale on the beach would have made you want to hear about his job. _His_ Henry Gale would be just slightly pathetic. He liked playing pathetic roles. It was so _amusing._

The sun had set long ago, and he had actually gone to sleep when something hit him hard between the shoulder blades. He gave a cry of pain and outrage and tried to struggle into a better position. Rousseau was on the ground, throwing rocks at him.

"Stop! Stop! Who are you! Let me out!"

"Tell me who you are."

"I'm nobody! I'm just a balloonist! I crashed here!"

Another rock. "Tell me who you are."

"Henry Gale! That's my name! Why are you throwing rocks at me! Who are you?"

"Like you don't know. Tell me who you are."

"I told you! Who do you think I am?"

"One of Them."

"One of who? Please don't hurt me!"

This went on for an unnecessarily absurd amount of time. He could keep it up all night, but it was rather tiresome. He had no intention of dealing with Rousseau any more than he absolutely had to. Of course she thought he was one of Them. She thought everyone was. Of course, until the plane had crashed, everyone was.

Eventually Rousseau gave up and left. If she came back and cut him down to take him back to her camp, he would kill her. If she didn't, he would get out and continue on his way. Meanwhile, his back ached, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he had a tumor on his spine. He went back to sleep. He knew how to sleep when necessary.

When light came, he woke and remained alert, sitting quietly in his net and listening. If Rousseau had wanted to question him longer, she would have. He had come to the conclusion that if she was coming back, it wouldn't be alone.

She had learned to move nearly as quietly through the jungle as his people, but the survivors certainly hadn't, and he heard them coming long before they came into view. The man was talking incessantly; he had a soft, accented voice that the listener in the net was able to place instantly from his knowledge of the survivors. Arabic. Sayid Jarrah, the Iraqi torturer. One of the last people among the survivors he would have wished for to find him, but he was just as exploitable as the rest. He instantly set up a despairing shouting and wailing and watched the dark man burst through the brush toward him.

They were so desperate, these survivors. Desperate to help, to protect, to hear news from the Real World, to escape. They had no idea that everything they wanted was so small.

Jarrah was being quite the hero. He rushed into the clearing, ignoring Rousseau's repeated, "Wait! Sayid, listen to me. Don't believe a word he says. He's one of Them!"

He shouted frantically, "I have no idea what she's talking about. She's crazy!"

"How long has he been up there?" Jarrah asked in his soft voice.

"Since last night! Please, just cut me down. My name is Henry Gale. I'm from Minnesota!" Jarrah stared up at him. "Please!"

"He's lying," Rousseau said.

Jarrah ignored her, taking out a rather excessively large knife. "I'm going to cut him down."

"Don't!"

"Thank you!" he said fervently.

"You're making a serious mistake!"

Jarrah cut the rope connecting the net to the branch above, and it fell heavily to the ground. Winded, he struggled to rise and tripped in the entangling vines and ropes. Jarrah hurried to him. "It's OK! It's OK. You're alright. Hold on. Take it easy."

There were some things you couldn't learn from a file. One was that an Iraqi torturer would be eager to help a little man untangle himself from a net a crazy French woman had trapped him in.

As he raised himself up from the ground, he saw Rousseau calmly fitting a very large arrow to a very unexpected crossbow. Inwardly he sighed. Now he knew what was coming as if he were precognitive. As the feckless little Henry Gale he was setting himself up as, he would run away from her. She would shoot him, but not fatally, because she wanted him to talk and convince Jarrah about his essential evilness, and the only person who could patch him up would be Shephard, the very man he was here to meet. Once again the Island had set him up perfectly, but did it really require that he get shot for it?

"Oh no," he said in a panicked voice and raised himself off the ground and launched himself across the clearing. When the arrow plunged through his right shoulder, propelled him forward, and smashed him into the leaf-shrouded ground, he had been expecting it so intensely it was like an afterthought, or a déjà vu of something that had already happened. That was the advantage of foresight.

For just a moment, as he lay on his face in the leaves, his mind was swamped by sheer agony. Only for a moment. He gave himself that latitude. Then the voices gave him something to hold on to.

"You could have killed him."

"If I wanted to kill him, I would have killed him."

"You shot this man with no provocation!"

"He _is_ one of Them! Tie him up. You should take him to your doctor. He's no good to you dead."

Jarrah's hands wrapping a rope or vine or something around his wrists were gentle, but he might as well have been yanking his arms violently, because the pain threatened to take him over again.

"And then what?"

"You talk to him, Sayid. If I recall, that is what you do? But know this: he will lie. For a long time, he will lie."

No, getting caught by Rousseau had not been the best idea. It would work, of course. He would be put into a position to really observe what was going on with the survivors, analyze the leaders, and find out the sort of man Shephard was. Arousing Jarrah's suspicions, though, had not been part of the plan. This could all only get much, much worse. He would be prepared for that.

That was his last conscious thought, as Jarrah lifted him and slung him over his shoulder and the world died around him.


	2. The Arrow

_The Arrow_

He woke to slow, steady, rhythmic jolting of agony through his shoulder and back. Jarrah was still walking, each step a fresh shock. He pressed his lips together hard and made no sound. He was still to be unconscious. In fact, he wished he was.

He couldn't see where they were going, hanging down behind Jarrah's back, but presently he became aware that they had entered a structure of some sort. He could see a cement floor. Jarrah squatted and leaned forward, hands coming up to support his prisoner's head and lean him up against something, a sort of bench, low enough to press his face into, and padded—he was grasping for details now, his body betraying him by beginning to go into shock, shaking and gasping without his permission, only it's a perfectly normal response, not a betrayal, and he can use that, too, because a poor, pathetic little man with an arrow through his shoulder and quivering in shock couldn't possibly be lying, now could he? He had not expected Jarrah to be so gentle. There was only so much cold, hard paper records could give you, and there are certain stereotypes that even leak onto the Island from the Real World, such as that Iraqi torturers must be cold and cruel at all times and not have gentle hands and soft voices. Only his own observation will be able to tell him what is really in Jarrah, not that he was supposed to care, because he wasn't one of the ones who mattered. But if he was going to be Henry's torturer, he mattered. And now he's thinking of himself as Henry, which is good, because shock really was quite a dampener to clear thinking.

Another man was looming over him, gazing intently, then kneeling down to look closer. He gave the stranger an evaluative look through mostly-closed eyes while his body continued to jerk and shiver. John Locke John Locke. One of the biggest mysteries the Island had presented him with but hardly important at the moment. He tried to rein in his wandering mind. John Locke. When Ethan had brought news that a man their records said had been carried onto the plane was walking around the Island—running, chasing down wild boar, and massively enjoying himself—he'd wanted to kidnap him immediately and study what was going on with him. And maybe he still could, because here he was, staring at him. Could he get him to talk?

He raised his head slightly from the bench. "Wh-where am I?" He felt like he should know this place, this warm-colored concrete room that looked, though his vision was blurry, very much like a kitchen.

Jarrah reached out and touched his bound hands. "Who are you?"

"Henry—Henry Gale," he gasped. "Ahhh—my back." He saw the bloody arrow protruding from his shoulder, gaped as if he hadn't been fully aware the whole time it was there, and then slewed his head away from it, because that was what his Henry Gale would do, though he himself felt a certain fascinating with it and wanted to stare at it until it no longer mattered. It shouldn't matter as much as it did, but then, he was in shock.

Jarrah said in a soothing voice—what skill he had—you wanted to trust him—" We're going to take it out. But first I want you to relax. How did you get to this island?"

Now he leaned into the pain and let the shock control his body, because Henry Gale would not be able to control it or even think that he should. "Four months ago, we crashed, my wife and I."

"Crashed in what?"

"A—a balloon! We were trying to cross the Pacific." Perhaps it would be easier if that real Henry Gale had been traveling in a less ridiculous craft, but at the same time, who would make up a story like that? He had rather enjoyed studying up on hot-air ballooning, inventing the kind of absurd man who would do something like that, coming up with non sequitur little details of the sort that happen in everyday conversation.

"Your wife, where is she?"

The wife had been necessary, because there was a grave, and anyway, a dead wife was so very heart-rending and sympathy-creating. "She died. She got—she got sick—three weeks ago. We were—staying in a cave off—the beach." His chest and voice were doing gasping things he had not authorized them to do. "My shoulder… At least untie my arms!"

A third voice rang, indignant, through the room, and there he is, the hero, the godsend, Jack Shephard himself. He almost laughed at himself, but he does need this hero so badly layers upon layers of need a doctor to fix his shoulder a doctor to fix his back and a hero to get him away from the relentlessly quiet questioning but he knew it was going to take just as many layers of manipulation to get this dark-eyed indignant hero-doctor to do what he wanted. And for that Rousseau and her arrow had been their own godsend, because now the doctor would be his devoted companion for some time, giving him plenty of opportunity for observation, because if there was one thing he had read between the lines of Dr. Shephard's file, it was that he was obsessed with making things right and whole, to the extent that he ignored what was already whole, so bringing him an arrow-pierced little man from Minnesota to fix—he should have thought of it himself remind him to thank Rousseau later

"Hey! Hey! You with me?" Shephard was touching him with skilled hands, recognizing his quite advanced case of shock. He nodded. He wasn't going anywhere. He's right where he needs to be.

"What, you were just going to let him bleed to death?" Oh, the indignation in the voice. A do-gooder. Give him a doctor any day for protection against sadists.

"I was trying to get honest answers while he was able to give them," Jarrah said, and he felt a sudden respect for him and a sudden amused disdain. The man did know what he was about, only he thought he was dealing with someone perfectly ordinary. A normal person, even most of the Islanders back home at the Barracks, would not be able to stand up mentally under this pain and this shock and would not be able to hold on to the sob story. "And his wound is far from life-threatening," the man added, which earned him an exasperated look from the doctor.

Suddenly water was against his lips, and he pulled in as much as he could.

"We should let Jack treat him first, then we'll get our answers," Locke said, moving away.

Jarrah said softly, "Jack, do not untie him."

And Shephard did not untie him. If it hadn't been for Jarrah—if it hadn't been for Rousseau, there wouldn't even be this suspicion. No, if it hadn't been for Ethan overstepping his bounds, but Ethan had always been a little off. At the moment it was perfectly logical to blame Ethan for Shephard not untying him.

His orange polo shirt was being cut away from his shoulder, and then liquid fire went down it Dharma antiseptic where did they get Dharma supplies and he didn't even bother to try to restrain what came out as a very piteous moan. He can see what the doctor is about to do with those bolt cutters, and he wishes for just a moment that he didn't _have_ to hold on to his mental stability as the doctor cuts off the back of the arrow and the whole thing jerks inside his shoulder. Then gauze came down firmly, without pity, on the place in his shoulder where flesh marries with wood, and there is only a very long eternity where a very long piece of wood is pulled out of him. He hears noise and doesn't know he's making it and then he doesn't know he's completely lost the cold, hard mental control he's known for.


	3. The Conspiracy

_The Conspiracy_

Voices and movement intruded in what had previously been a pleasantly dark and still world. Footsteps, talking, a roar in the background that he gradually identified as pain. That was good. Stay in the background. It was unimportant compared to what was going on outside.

"We can't just leave him laying here, Jack."

He almost said, _"Lying. It's lying, John Locke. Not laying,"_ but he didn't. It seemed wiser to lie still as if unconscious, just listening and holding on to the voices. Now he could feel that the doctor was still at work, taping bandages to his shoulder, brisk, efficient, firm, unsentimental.

"Yeah? Well, where do you think we should put him?"

"I say we put him in the armory. It's secure."

Armory? He still hadn't made out where he was. A Dharma station, obviously, but being unconscious twice now had drastically reduced his opportunities for observation.

"Better to err on the side of safety, Jack. Least until we can be sure."

He nearly sighed again. _Is this how it's going to be, Locke? Me correcting your grammar and pronunciation? It's not 'air.' It's 'er.'_ Then he realized he was concentrating perhaps a little too hard on the words to the exclusion of the substance, because he hadn't realized they were actually going to move him, not until Shephard lifted him into a sitting position and he nearly passed out again. He had spent far too much time unconscious, though, and held tightly to his awareness and what he needed to do. He kept his whole body completely limp and did not allow his face to flinch or his voice to betray him when they jolted him back and forth and finally laid him on a very cold floor. It took a great deal of strain to keep his body limp instead of shivering.

"Pull that cot in here. He shouldn't be on his back," hero-Shephard ordered, and there were people leaving sounds and then a door sliding closed and the sound of a lock clicking into place. Then silence.

In the long, ominous silence of the next three seconds, he understood. Locke and Jarrah had conspired against Shephard. He was locked in with Jarrah. Shephard pounding indignantly on the door outside was only an afterthought to what was already obvious.

The conflict outside the door between Shephard and Locke offset the absolute silence inside. Things were not going according to plan, but plans were easily changed and adapted, and perhaps this was better. Torturers rarely recognized that their craft went both ways, that they revealed as much as they learned. Everyone always revealed something, and if Jarrah was an expert in torture, _he_ was an expert in seeing what people didn't know they were revealing.

Despite his mind being relatively clear, there was a tight, sour knot in the pit of his stomach. He was locked in a room with a torturer, and this was going to make his long-ago father's beatings look like playing patty-cake. If only he could control his mind, that was all he asked. His body could do what it liked, as it already was, beginning to shiver and shake on the cold floor—that would all only add verisimilitude to his story. But his mind was his, always under tight control—_Except where certain teenagers are concerned,_ said the snide voice—and no Outsider was going to take it from him. He could beat Jarrah at his game. He could beat nearly anyone at nearly any game.


	4. The Armory

_The Armory_

The long silence punctuated by Shephard's quarrel with Locke outside was broken by Jarrah tying something to his already bound hands. He had already shivered himself onto his side.

"Get up," Jarrah said.

He gasped, as one just waking. "What is happening?"

"Here, let me help you." The words were calm; the hands grabbing him and hauling him to a sitting position were not. He couldn't help crying out, which was fine. He stared at Jarrah with all the bewilderment he could muster.

"You said you'd been here for four months." Jarrah was beginning well. Confuse the prisoner with a lack of context. He could do confusion.

"What?"

Jarrah's voice lost the softness. "You said you came to this island four months ago, yes?"

"Where am I?" Henry Gale wouldn't quite understand what was going on. He, however, was taking everything in that he could. An armory was definitely where he was, only empty of armament. There was a hatch in the floor with rings, and his hands were tethered to one of the rings with a belt.

Jarrah, of course, was not telling him where he was. He bent down and stared into his face, said softly, "Please, answer my question."

"Yeah—yes, we landed four months ago. Maybe more. Who are you?"

"And you were in a cave for all that time?"

"Off the beach, on the north shore of the island."

"How far from this beach to where you were captured?"

"I don't know."

The soft voice got loud again. "How many days' walk?"

"Two—two days!"

"Why did you stay on the beach for so long?"

"Why wouldn't we? We wanted to be there for flyovers. We had an emergency beacon, a transmitter."

"What kind of transmitter?"

"An ADF beacon. We wanted to make sure we'd be spotted." He stared up at the impassive Jarrah, slightly enjoying this. He could come up with any logical, relevant details, all couched in Henry's terrified but faintly belligerent tone. He knew his Island; Jarrah couldn't trip him up on those details. He'd done his research. Any question Jarrah could ask about ballooning he could answer. He'd always enjoyed a good intellectual game. And now it was time to begin to make Jarrah reveal himself. "Look, whatever you think I am, I'm not! Please—please—just…Tell me your name."

"Your wife. What is her maiden name?"

"Murphy."

"Where did you meet her?"

"University of Minnesota."

"How did she die?" Jarrah knelt down, gentle again.

He decided to get angry. "She got sick!"

"She got sick?" Jarrah asked as if that was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard.

"It started as a fever," he said, working up to the moment when his voice would crack. "After two days she was delirious. Then she died." It cracked. He put his head down with not quite a sob. Interestingly, he had stopped giving any real attention to the pain in his shoulder. The game was all-important.

Jarrah put his chin in his hand and stared at him. He wasn't accepting the sob story. Why wasn't he? He knew he was completely convincing. Being convincing wasn't the most important part of this dance, of course, but it _would_ be nice to avoid or put off the torture part.

"I don't know why you're asking me all these questions. I don't know why you're treating me this way! Why I have to explain to you who I am, when you don't tell me who you are."

They stared at each other for a moment. Jarrah presently said deliberately, "I was twenty-three years old when the Americans came to my country. I was a good man. I was a soldier. And when they left, I was something different. For the next six years, I did things I wish I could erase from my memory, things which I never thought myself to be capable of. But I did come to learn this: there is a part of me which was always capable. You want to know who I am?" He said very simply and very softly, "My name is Sayid Jarrah, and I am a torturer."

Henry Gale wouldn't know anything about this man. The idea of being faced with a torturer who didn't believe him would be mind-breakingly terrifying. He let himself tremble and the pain in the back of his mind come out on his face. He was thinking, _Thank you, Sayid Jarrah. That little speech was meant to totally unnerve me, and instead you have given me a weapon. Because now I know that you hate yourself._

Outside he could hear the sound of running water, like a sink. He held Jarrah's eyes with a terrified fascination. After a moment Jarrah pulled away, moving away deliberately, perching himself up on a ledge against the wall. Placing himself above and in an authoritarian position. Henry obliged by slumping weakly in a little huddle on the floor. Such a pathetic sight, with his orange shirt torn away from his shoulder, the bandages slightly bloody, his hands and feet bound. There were days when being a small man was a psychological advantage. Shephard would believe him, even if Jarrah didn't.

Jarrah said, in the soft, patient tone that showed he could go on like this forever, "Tell me about this balloon."

"What?"

"This balloon that brought you here with your wife. Tell me about it."

He said in a subdued voice, "What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

He looked up. "She's a hundred and forty feet high, sixty feet wide, and when she's up in the air, five hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet of helium and a hundred thousand of hot air keep her up." He made his voice soft and reminiscent. "And if you could look down on her, you'd see a big yellow smiley face on top." He gave a half-laugh with a slight break in his voice and looked away from Jarrah to stare at the wall as if he could see that ridiculous balloon he had seen collapsed in the trees in the jungle.

"Why would you travel in that way?"

He shook his head self-deprecatingly. "Because I was rich—because—" He looked up with wide, self-accusatory eyes. "It was my dream." And look away in shame. "And Jennifer thought it'd be…neat."

Jarrah was caught by something he'd said. "You _were_ rich."

He looked up slowly. Had that been a mistake? He gave a slight, unamused laugh. "I guess I'm thinking of things in the past tense now. How's that for optimism?"

"What did you do to become so rich?"

"I sold my company."

"What kind of company?"

"Mining."

"What did you mine?"

"We mined nonmetallic minerals. I know—everyone wanted to talk to me at cocktail parties."

That was a _brilliant_ line. At first it seemed to work. Jarrah smiled faintly. He got down from his perch and stood towering over him.

"Give me your hands."

For a moment he didn't understand, and the expression on his face was Henry's expression. Then Jarrah pulled a pair of pliers out of his pocket, and comprehension sank in, and the flinch was not entirely Henry's.

"Give me your hands!"

Jarrah reached down and grabbed his hands with a painful wrench to his shoulder, separated his right index finger, and put the pincers of the pliers around it. He didn't have to make his breathing go shallow. It went entirely on its own.

"Where is she buried?"

"What?"

"Listen to me. You said you buried your wife. Tell me where."

"What are you going—"

Jarrah shouted with sudden fury, "_Where?"_

With Jarrah's loss of composure, he regained his own. That always happened. Another person losing control always gave him control. And a man with the passion and fury deep in Jarrah's eyes could easily be pushed past the point of being able to cold-bloodedly crush a man's finger with pliers.

He let himself come nearly to the point of tears. "In the jungle! By the balloon—in the jungle."

"How deep? How deep did you dig the grave?"

"I don't—it—it—it was—" This was an unusual line of questioning.

"How deep? How many shovelfuls of earth? Did you use your hands?" Jarrah had become nearly frantic. "_How long did it take you?"_ He blinked, as blinking back tears, the first real sign of his weakness.

"I don't remember!" At this rate Jarrah would very soon reveal another important piece of information, without having learned anything about his prisoner.

"You _would_ remember! You would remember how deep! You would remember every shovelful, every moment! You would remember what it felt like to place her body inside!" He was breaking down, right on cue. "You would remember if you buried the woman you loved! _You would remember! If it were true!_"

Now he let himself be calmer. Now he only had to stick a skewer into the center of Jarrah's pain. "Did you—did you lose someone? Did you lose someone here on the Island? Did you lose someone too? What happened to her?"

Jarrah squeezed his eyes shut, then popped them open. "It was an accident. It was an accident! The woman responsible thought she was someone else! Someone coming to hurt her!" His face went dark, past pain into anger. "Someone like _you!"_

Now he knew what was coming. His father had gone through these same stages, from calmness while drinking to pain and memory to rage to violence. Now he was back in familiar territory and could control the situation. "Just—just—"

Jarrah backed away and set the pliers down.

"This is all a mistake. Slow down here, OK? Hurting me isn't gonna bring her back."

"You _know_ what I lost!" His fist flew into the side of Henry's face. He grabbed him by the hair and hit him again and again.

"No!" He cried out, cold satisfaction replacing any fear that was left over. "No—no—no—Stop! You're hurting me!"

"I want to hear you! Tell me who you are!" The fist flew again, and he screamed again.

"No! _Please—"_

His shrieks had an effect. Outside Shephard shouted, "_Sayid!"_ pounded on the door, and shouted again.

Now all he needed to do was to sound as pitiful as possible until Shephard managed to get the door open. He managed a few, "I'll do whatever you want!" sort of negotiations at the top of his lungs. Jarrah no longer cared any more. He hit again and again. When the Iraqi began using his feet, bringing his heel down into Henry's face, he realized the man potentially could beat him to death before the doctor managed to stop him.

An alarm rang through the whole place, wherever they were, marrying with the dazed ringing in his head. There was shouting, the alarm ever more insistent, Jarrah screaming, "Who are you? _Who are you?"_ his heel repeatedly smashing him. He could only huddle on the floor trying to protect his head, and deep down with the triumph was a knot of trying very hard not to think of everything he didn't want to lose.

Then like quietness in a storm came the sound of the lock clicking from outside. Jarrah had kicked him so many times he almost couldn't feel it. The door opened, and hero-Shephard rushed in, wrapped his arms around Jarrah from behind, and tried to pull him away.

"He's _lying!" _Jarrah screamed.

"Not like this!"

Henry sobbed, "I'll tell you whatever you want!" huddled small and hurt on the floor.

"He's lying!"

Shephard managed to shove Jarrah out of the armory. "That's _enough!"_

Jarrah stood gasping in the kitchen. It was a kitchen, with a sink, a window, and an oh-so-familiar Dharma symbol on the wall. He pushed himself up slightly from the floor and stared out at Jarrah, and for just a moment he did not disguise himself with Henry's expression. He wanted Jarrah to know he had been beaten. Jarrah's passion visibly left him as he stared back, coming over cold.

Then Shephard shoved the door closed and locked it, and he finally let himself collapse on the floor and simply succumb to the waves of pain. Of course. That was where he was. The Swan.


	5. The Swan

_The Swan_

He had never been in the Swan, which should have alerted him instantly that that was precisely where he was, though being shot with an arrow, going into shock, fainting twice, and then being brutally beaten were fair excuses for not noticing. Growing up in the Dharma world did tend to give you knowledge of just about all its secrets, and being a workman gave you even more access. His father had been wrong about being a janitor. That was a position of the greatest trust. But the Swan station was one that had always been under the most secure lockdown, and even after the Purge they'd considered it better to let it remain under lockdown and let the people inside believe all was well with their world. The Dharma files left behind made it quite clear that the Swan work needed to continue. It would be pointless to lock up one of their own people down there when there were two obliging Dharma volunteers who had no idea their people had all been slaughtered. He had not known, though, that the Dharma stooges had been replaced by the survivors of the plane crash. How on the Island had that happened? He remembered hearing the alarm earlier; did these people even know what they were doing? Had they been told they were preventing an electromagnetic catastrophe? How amusing would it be if they didn't!

He was lying still on the floor, just thinking, pondering his options and making plans. There was clearly little unity among the survivors, if two would conspire together against an ostensible leader to do something they considered necessary to all their survival. They had a torturer conflicted about his own willingness to do his job and agonized by the loss of someone on the plane, a doctor who broke things so he could fix them, and a paraplegic walking around the Island, a paraplegic who had had a very pathetic life and now suddenly seemed strong and in charge. Did the others know about Locke's past? Or did they just accept him for who he now was? It was entirely likely that he knew more about any of them than they knew about each other. He knew, for instance, that Shephard had once assaulted his own father, an action he could identify with. But Shephard's assault had been a purely emotional, rage-based action, while his own had been carefully planned and performed with a clear head. Push the doctor too far, and he would snap. But once a man had snapped, his rage could be directed and used. So the thing he had to do would be to figure out if he needed a cool, decision-making Dr. Shephard or an angry, manipulated Dr. Shephard. The first was preferable, but the second was much easier. It could take a long time to bring an intelligent man to the point where he believed that the decisions you were making for him were actually his own decisions. And he wasn't sure if he had a long time.

The door unlocked and opened, and feet approached him. There was the sound of something being set up behind him, and then the door closed and locked again, but a pair of feet stayed in front of him, a tray set down near him. He could see gauze and antiseptic on it. _Hello, Doctor._ He didn't move, lay there with his eyes open and staring dully before him. He could see Shephard's hands untying Jarrah's belt from the ring in the floor and then felt them untying it from the bonds around his hands.

"Are you awake, Henry?"

"Yes," he murmured.

"Then let's get you up on this cot."

Shephard got his arm around him and lifted him, since he was not offering any assistance, other than not making his legs buckle under him, which he considered doing, just to make it more difficult. The doctor set him on a standard-issue Army cot and leaned him back against the wall.

"Do you think you can drink some water?"

"Yes, please," he said faintly.

Water had never tasted so good, though it was tainted with his own blood on his lips.

"I'm going to make sure none of your stitches have torn, and then I'll clean up your face. This might hurt." Shephard began removing the front bandage he had put on so recently.

He gave a sound that might have been a laugh.

"What's that?"

"What's a little more pain?" he mumbled. "I guess I'm used to it."

"We don't want to hurt you, Henry. That's not why we're here."

"You could've fooled me. Why do it, then?"

"We've been having some…conflict with another group of people on the Island. They've kidnapped and killed some of us. You're just as likely to be one of them as not. More likely, really." He was taping on a new bandage, apparently no new stitches necessary. "Can you lean forward? I need to get at your back. You can lean against me, if you need to."

"How tender." He almost laughed at the irony, could easily have said, _"And while you're back there, would you mind cutting the tumor out of my spine?"_

Back bandage replaced, Shephard adjusted a thin, woolen blanket around his shoulders and leaned him back against the wall, picked up the antiseptic from the tray and poured some on some gauze. "This is going to sting."

It did. He hissed in a breath as Shephard went over every cut on his face with the antiseptic and gently wiped blood away with a wet cloth.

"You know what you're doing. Are you a doctor?"

"Yes, I am. A spinal surgeon, actually. My name is Jack Shephard."

"Well, for the record, you make a fine emergency room doctor, Dr. Shephard. Your friends are lucky to have you."

A smile flashed across Shephard's face. It was amazing how easy it was to make someone feel relaxed. "You can call me Jack. I always feel like people are talking to my dad when they call me Dr. Shephard."

"Oh, is your father a doctor too?" He almost slipped up, almost said _was._ He had to speak as though he didn't know that the older Dr. Shephard's coffin had been on the same plane as the younger.

"Was. He—was."

"I'm sorry. But surely you deserve to be called Doctor Shephard? If not when you're a spinal surgeon, then when? Especially if the real Dr. Shephard is dead."

There. A startled, hurt flash went across Shephard's face. Just what he had been looking for.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm just talking to get my mind off…things."

"If you don't talk, it'll hurt less," Shephard said shortly. "You have two deep cuts on your bottom lip. Be still and give them a chance to close up."

He was quiet for a moment, then said, "What is this place? Was that a fire alarm I heard earlier?"

"No, it wasn't. It's a kind of bunker."

"Who puts a bunker on an island in the South Pacific? And why do you live here with a man from Iraq? You're not the sort of…tribe I would have expected."

"We're not a tribe. Our plane crashed here nearly a month ago. You didn't see or hear it?"

"It's a big island. You can't hear much when you're in a cave on the beach."

"That's convenient."

He shrugged. "I can't help that. It's the truth. So were the three of you alone, or were there others on your plane?"

"I said not to talk. I'm done here. I'll bring you some food in a while."

Shephard gathered up his supplies and set them with the tray on the ledge opposite the cot. Then he picked up a knife off the tray and began to cut the cords around his prisoner's wrists and ankles.

"Are you going to let me go?"

"No."

He slumped back against the wall as small and pathetic as possible, careful not to let his right shoulder touch it. It was very odd to think that he could probably stick his finger all the way through his shoulder. He hoped there wasn't going to be permanent impairment.

"Dr. Shephard—Jack," he said as Shephard was taking the tray away.

Shephard turned back. He looked weary and wary. "What?"

"Thank you for stopping that man from hurting me," he said softly, hoping to feed whatever sense of guilt the doctor had for keeping him locked up. "I thought he was going to kill me."

"He was." And he pulled the door shut and locked it.

Score: Henry Gale 2, Survivors 0.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: I just realized that the third-season episode "Exposé" makes it clear Ben knew about the survivors being in the Swan and intended to get there. You'll just have to bear with a few small missteps like this, as there's so much complexity to "Lost" that keeping all the details straight is very difficult.<strong>


	6. The Ring

_The Ring_

Shephard brought food later, a yellow plate of…something. Ah, Dharma food. He remembered Dharma food only too well. _His_ people actually knew how to cook. He was a fair cook himself. Nevertheless, he was famished. He restrained his eagerness for the food and looked as full of pain and as weak as possible, took the plate with a mumbled, "Thank you."

"Are you alright?"

"Define 'alright.'"

Shephard came and lifted his wrist to check his pulse, then put a hand against his forehead. He stared up at him and calculated how many blows it would take to subdue him, thought amusedly to himself that this tall, strong doctor probably had no idea that his small, meek prisoner could take him down if given the benefit of surprise. In a test of strength he could never defeat him, but his assets were unpredictability, flexibility of mind, and cunning anyway, not strength.

"You don't have a fever. You'll be alright."

"That's good to know." He picked up the fork listlessly.

"Were you and your wife having marital problems?"

"What?" He stared again.

"You're not wearing a wedding ring, and you don't have a tan line."

_How very clever of you, Doctor._ Someone should have thought of that. _He_ should have thought of that. Someone would have loaned him a ring. An unforgivable oversight. He made a self-deprecating face. "I lost it. The day before we left. I'd lost weight, it was loose, the weather was cold, we were doing a test run, and it was gone. No time to replace it before we left. I put a new one on order, and it's probably still sitting at the jeweler's waiting for a dead man to come home." He made a sound somewhere between a laugh, a sigh, and a sob. He stirred his shapeless mass of something with bananas, then looked up to see if Shephard believed him. It was hard to tell. "What about you, Jack? No ring. You married?"

Shephard looked like he was going to turn around and leave, but he didn't. "No. Not anymore."

"Oh, I'm sorry. That's—that's hard. It's so common that we forget how hard it is. My wife—Jennifer—she was married before. He left her. She wasn't good enough for him. He'd found someone else who, apparently, could be everything he wanted." He took in all the dark emotions going through Shephard's eyes. Sometimes he really enjoyed making up these stories. "She was good enough for me," he finished softly. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I know you don't believe me. It's just—I've never had anyone to talk to since she—she died. I've just been, you know, _carrying_ it all. It's hard, Jack. It's really hard."

"Good night, Henry," Shephard said after a moment and locked the door behind him again.

Sometimes the other person didn't have to say anything to tell you volumes. He tore into the food. He'd done a good day's work.


	7. The Cot

_The Cot_

The cot was not at all unlike the cots his own people slept on when they were playing natives-in-the-bush, and it felt quite comfortable and familiar. He went to sleep quickly, and then his dreams were all jumbled and confused. Jarrah beat him again, only it was his father, and it was his father's face that was bloody, not his own. Shephard patched him up again, only—no, it was Juliet, dabbing gently at his face and smiling with mesmerizing blue eyes, and then she slapped him right across his bruised face, which was only what she'd been wanting to do for the past two or three years, only she hadn't, which was odd, but she was a very patient woman, perhaps almost as patient as he. Locke was coming in bringing food, only it wasn't Locke, it was Jacob with a face shrouded in darkness, because he'd never actually seen him, bending down beside the cot and whispering, "Do you even have _any idea_ what I want?" He was trapped in Rousseau's net again, only instead of Rousseau throwing rocks at him, it was Alex shooting arrows from a crossbow at him, screaming, "I hate you, Dad! I wish you were dead!"

He woke with a start, hoping desperately that the cry in his throat had remained there, silent. He lay still, listening and trying to calm his breathing. What had awakened him seemed to have been conversation between Shephard and Locke.

"He hasn't made a sound all night," he heard Shephard say, and then footsteps went away. He was going to have to figure out whose footsteps were whose.

Good. He hadn't betrayed himself, at least not vocally. His sleeping brain certainly had turned traitorous, not that anyone could help what he dreamed about. Still, it was weakness, letting all the vulnerable areas of his life mix with his current mission. He couldn't do that again. He couldn't afford it. He had sharp eyes, that doctor. He knew how to see weaknesses. The only weaknesses he could be allowed to see were Henry Gale's.  
>He settled back down on his left side and tried to go back to sleep. His shoulder hurt, his face hurt, his back hurt, and his mind hurt.<p>

Score: Henry Gale 3; Survivors 1.


	8. The Book

_The Book_

The presence of morning was signaled by dishes rattling, water running, and conversation. He didn't hear Jarrah's voice; maybe he had been banished. Permanently was to be hoped for.

When the armory door opened, he was sitting up on the cot in a dejected, weary huddle. Actually, he'd slept fairly well the second half of the night. Shephard came in around Locke with a tray and another of those nauseatingly '70s Fiestaware plates.

"Do you have to go to the bathroom?"

_And good morning to you too._ "Nope." He reached out for the plate, still being listless and dejected.

"Well, just let us know when you do."

He stared at the food. It looked a little better today. Some kind of meat and what looked like reconstituted potatoes. Didn't these people know about breakfast? "Yeah, I'll look forward to that."

Shephard took the yellow plate from last night and turned to go. Locke stepped in around him and held out a fat book.

"Thought you might like something to read." When Henry didn't take it, staring at it, he tossed it onto the cot.

Henry looked down at it. Interesting choice. Did he just grab the first thing off the shelf, or did he ponder what a potential enemy might want to read? The themes in _The Brothers Karamazov…_There was no way he could have known…He went slightly cold.

"Dostoyevsky. You don't have any Stephen King?" He actually admired Dostoyevsky a great deal, but Henry Gale wouldn't. Henry Gale would be a little man trying to do big things and would prefer action-oriented or pop-culture books. King had come out automatically. He was on the brain lately, though his writing style did not precisely please. Dostoyevsky he was not.

"Library's a little outdated," Locke said.

"Right," he said dismally, then put faint sarcasm into his voice. "Well, thanks!" As if a man unjustly held prisoner ought to be thankful for sops tossed to him by his captors. Henry Gale would be annoyed. He sat slumped and staring at the plate until they'd gone out and locked the door. Then he ate, despite not being very hungry, while keeping his ears alert for the conversation he could hear through the door.

"What's with the book?" Shephard asked.

"Just something to pass the time," Locke answered. "Did you know that Hemmingway was jealous of Dostoyevsky?"

Shephard's voice was dismissive. "No, John, uh, I didn't know that."

"He wanted to be the world's greatest writer, but he convinced himself that he could never get out from under Dostoyevsky's shadow. Kind of sad, really. What are we doing, Jack?"

"What are we doing?"

"We can't hide him down here forever. Changing shifts around is going to get people asking questions. I just want to know what the long-term plan is."

Shephard sounded impatient and, again, dismissive. "Well, John, let me ask you this. We don't have a long-term plan for the button, but we keep pushing it, don't we? Look, until we know who he is, whether or not he's telling the truth, we have to keep doing what we're doing. If you've got a better idea, let's hear it."

He smiled to himself. "How about you let me go?" he called, just to see what they would do.

There was long silence. He smiled again. Did they have any idea how much these sorts of conversations gave away about them? Lack of unity, lack of comprehension, lack of trust, just people wandering around without a plan, at odds with themselves and each other.

Score: Henry Gale 4; Survivors 1.


	9. The Alarm

_The Alarm_

Every hundred and eight minutes, the alarm went off. He'd hardly noticed it last night. Too much pain and fatigue. Now he was more clear-headed. The continuing pain actually helped. He'd come to view pain as a clarifying and focusing force, when it wasn't too overpowering. That began back when he was twelve, when he came back from having been "kidnapped" by the Hostiles and, at first, thought his father had changed and would love him and later, with the first drunken clout across the head, knew both that his father would never love him and that he would never again fear him or the pain he caused.

That was the time he went from being an American kid stuck in Dharma Never Never Land to being an undercover Hostile in the enemy Dharma camp. He couldn't remember the precise change. It had all been a time of pain and chaos in his childhood that was all a blur in his memory. All he remembered was one day he was one of Them and he knew one day he would be their leader. They'd made it happen, he and Richard. The somewhat pathetic irony of the tumor in his spine was that what was going to kill him barely hurt yet, while this ridiculous hole in his shoulder that wasn't remotely life-threatening hurt worse than anything he'd ever experienced. Except for being shot as a child, but he could scarcely remember anything about that.

He turned his mind away from such edifying subjects and opened _Karamazov._ He hadn't read it in years, but the first sentence was still so familiar.

_ "Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place."_

He appreciated things being in their proper place. He easily fell into the Russian rhythm of the storytelling, while also thinking about what Henry Gale would say about it, how he could use it to extract information from Shephard or, particularly, Locke, who seemed to be familiar with Dostoyevsky, and about what was going on outside the armory. People came in, people went out, the alarm went on, it stopped. He wondered who was entering the code and who had told them what to do. Shephard's annoyed words to Locke _might_ have indicated that they didn't know what they were doing and possibly that Locke was the one who had convinced the others that they needed to do it. How had he done that, if he had?

When the door lock began to click, he had time to flip to the front of the book and pretend like he hadn't gotten a fair way into it, mesmerized by its words. Shephard came in, carrying his little tray again.

"I want to take a look at your shoulder. We need to prevent infection."

"By all means, let's prevent infection." Henry Gale had a snarky side to him, it seemed, very similar to his own but also entirely different. He was sarcastic and snide for the sheer love of the words and because there was a certain entertainment value to be got in others' reactions. Henry Gale was sarcastic because he was a powerless little man in an uncertain, frightening position and only had his tongue as a weapon.

He closed his eyes as the front bandage came off and Shephard began a careful examination of the front of the wound.

"Looks like you're doing good."

_Doing_ well._ If I were doing _good,_ I would be going around giving shoes to orphans. Is there something about America that makes even highly educated people unable to speak their own language? I think I'm glad I'm not American. _(Never mind that technically he was.)

"What is that alarm that keeps going off? It's very annoying."

"Talk about it," Shephard muttered, moving around to his back.

"So…do you know what it is? If your plane crashed here so recently, you can't have always been responsible for it."

He felt Shephard's doctorly fingers stop prodding him for just a second. "What do you mean, responsible?"

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Alarms don't go off for no reason. They want you to respond to them. And an alarm that goes off every hour and a half like clockwork wants you to do something every hour and a half. So you have to sit around here doing what it wants every hour and a half. I just hope there's a good reason."

Shephard taped a new bandage to his back slightly more forcefully than necessary, which made him smile to himself.

"There's a reason, and it's none of your business."

He didn't actually smile, because Shephard was going back around him to pick up his plate.

"Do you want a wash?"

"A wash?"

"You know, the thing you do with water and soap? You could use one."

"Yes, well, that happens when you're locked in a room for two days."

"Shut up and come on."

Shephard kept a firm hand on his left shoulder and steered him out of the armory. He took in as much as possible of the Swan station, which wasn't much, because Shephard pushed him around the corner and into the bathroom.

"Sink, soap, razor. That's what you get. The door doesn't close."

"I take it being a jailor isn't a normal pastime for you."

"Shut up and wash."

"It just doesn't seem to suit you, that's all," he murmured and bent over the sink.

Some minutes later a deep, resonant voice echoed through the station. "Hello?"

Frantically Shephard jolted up from his position against the wall outside and slipped into the bathroom, slid the door closed. Henry thought of several snide things to say and did not say them.

"Hello?"

He dried his hands. "What's the—"

Shephard waved a hand in his face. "Shhh!"

"Hello?"

Locke's voice answered. "Howdy."

"Hello, John. You're alone?" There was a deepness to the vowels and a lightness to the consonants that made him pause to try to place the accent, running over the survivors in his mind.

"Not anymore," Locke said lightly.

"How many of you—" he began, but Shephard interrupted him.

"Shut. Up."

"I was hoping to borrow a saw," said the new voice, and with that he placed it. African. Eko. Nigerian drug lord and pretend priest. Quite the intriguing character. Difficult to find information on, but his contacts in Africa had done it, and Goodwin had sent back some interesting character analysis, before he died.

"Absolutely. Right this way," Locke said cheerfully, and they moved off out of earshot.

"Who was _that?_ Was he _African?_ Are there many more of you?"

"Just finish."

"Nice that you managed to find a place like this and a stash of tools to dole out to people," he said, finishing his shaving. "What do you make them pay?"

"Pay? We don't make anyone pay. We're not like that."

"Oh. Sorry. I just figured you have this whole mini society set up. You as president or king-slash-jailor, Mr. Jarrah as policeman, Mr.—whoever the bald man is—as—what? Cook? Obeyer of the alarm?"

"You talk too much."

"Well, what else am I supposed to do? Memorize Russian names from Dostoyevsky? I can't even pronounce them."

A flat hand slapped the door. "He's gone," Locke said.

Shephard opened the bathroom door. "You done?"

"I suppose I'm presentable enough for prison."

As he stepped out of the bathroom, the alarm went off. Shephard seized him by the shoulder and propelled him back into the armory. "John!"

"I've got it," Locke said, loping off across the room.

"His name's John? He doesn't look like a John. Allan, maybe."

"Allan?" Shephard paused in the door of the armory.

"You know, Quatermain? Never mind. Don't forget to lock the door on your way out. And I wouldn't mind some lunch."


	10. The Confession

_The Confession_

Locke brought him lunch later. There was some kind of smoothie, some kind of soup, and crackers. He eyed Locke. He wondered how a man who had lost mobility and been cooped up in a wheelchair and a cubicle, then suddenly regained mobility and gained the life he'd always wanted, liked being cooped up again, pushing keys.

"Are you making all this food?" Start out friendly. Then the digs would throw him off balance.

Locke gave a shrug, like _Yeah, it's nothing._

"It's well-stocked, this place. Really surprising for a deserted island."

"It's not deserted. The Others were here before us."

"Oh, right. The 'Others.' But really, what is this place? It has a bathroom and a kitchen and a safe and a very annoying alarm—"

Locke smiled. "Jack said you were interested in the alarm."

"Who wouldn't be interested in something that shouts at you a dozen times a day? It's like another special form of torture. Have you been dealing with it all the time you've been here?"

Locke smiled again, and there was a gleam deep in his eyes, a kind of sunniness that made Henry stared at him. What _was_ it that had turned him into this man he was now? Was he the same man who had shouted ineffectually at an adventure-provider in Australia, who had been conned again and again by his conman father? He didn't look like it, but then, as he well knew, appearances were usually deceiving.

"Don't worry about the alarm. I'm taking care of it."

"You are? Not the doctor?"

"He has other things to do. Like being a doctor." He turned away, but not before Henry had seen the faint darkness in his eyes.

"I don't even know your name."

"It's John Locke. And yours is?"

He raised his head with wide eyes. "I've _told_ you. It's Henry Gale."

"And you're from Minnesota. Right. Are you sure it's not Kansas?" He pulled the door to.

"I won't say that wasn't an inspiration!" he called after him.

It was Juliet who first caught the reference. She'd said, "They're never going to believe you."

"Don't worry. I can be _quite_ persuasive."

"I know you can," she said in as patronizing a tone as she could manage, "but you're starting out with a disadvantage. You can't be a balloonist named Henry Gale. You might as well tell them you're from Kansas."

He'd stared at her, slightly amused and slightly annoyed at her attempt to patronize him. "What does Kansas have to do with it?"

"You really don't know, do you? It's from a sort of fairy tale every American knows."

"Well, I never claimed to be an American, did I?"

"No. Whatever you are, American is not part of it," she'd said with quiet finality, and he'd come away feeling that the score had been slightly in her favor.

After that he'd read the book—someone had it sitting around—found it oddly apt, and chose to keep the name. After all, a real Henry Gale had set out in a balloon from Minnesota and crashed on his Island. People didn't just crash here for no good reason.

He ate his food and resumed his book. So much of this game was waiting. He was used to waiting. He'd waited more than ten years to finally join his people.

It was fairly quiet outside the armory for quite some time. The book was absorbing, but he kept some of his awareness on the world outside his cell, so when two new sets of footsteps (he thought he could recognize Locke's by now) entered, he was instantly alert to them.

"Back for more tools?" Locke said. So it was Eko then.

"He knows, John," Shephard said. Knows what? Were they keeping their prisoner a big secret? How amusing.

"Well, there you go," Locke said with a shrug in his voice.

"I want to speak to him," Eko's deep voice said.

"Would you mind telling us why?"

"That is my business, though I cannot prevent you from overhearing."

"Do you know who he is?" Shephard asked.

"No. Nor do I care. Please let me talk to him." There was authority in his perfectly polite voice.

The lock began to click. He quickly flipped back to the front of his book. It was a small thing, but the details pleased him. He could hear Shephard's voice just outside the door, though the doctor was trying to stay quiet.

"Just be careful what you say to him. He's smart and curious. Just give us a shout when you're done."

Locke's voice was also very low. "And if the alarm goes off, don't tell him what it's for."

"What is it for?" Eko asked, and at the silence that followed, Henry smiled. It really seemed like they didn't know.

The door opened. He looked up from the second page of his book as if he'd had no idea they were going to enter. The newcomer handed a very fat, polished stick to Locke and came in. He was very tall, very broad in the shoulders, very thickly muscled, and he wore a tattered white linen shirt of a style not very Western and a silver cross on a leather cord around his neck. He wore a short beard with what looked like two tiny braids, pirate-like. As he came in, Henry stared up at him with trepidation on his face, as if he expected more torture to be coming from the alarming man. Given what he knew of Eko, it wasn't actually a far stretch anyway.

"Hello." Eko came up to the cot and held out his hand to Henry, who recoiled slightly. "I am Mr. Eko."

He slowly held out a slightly limp hand. "Henry Gale."

"Do you mind if I sit, Henry?"

"OK."

He still stared with wide, afraid eyes as Eko sat on the opposite end of the bed and leaned against the wall. Behind the wide, afraid eyes, he was wondering what on the Island this man could want of him. His name had been on the list Richard brought back from Jacob, and he hadn't quite been able to fathom why. A Nigerian drug lord? Masquerading as a priest? Why would Jacob want him in either of these roles?

"How long have you been in here?"

"Two days."

"Are they treating you well?" He said it as if he had nothing to do with the _they_ he was talking about.

"Treating me well? I'm a—a prisoner, and I don't know why, or for what—"

"You are a prisoner because they are being careful. They are being careful because they believe you are lying."

"Why would I lie? They think I'm one of these…Others? Other what?"

"Please! Stop talking, Henry." He looked very menacing, and Henry made himself look frightened again. "The first night I spent on this Island, I was dragged into the jungle by two men. They never spoke a word to me, nor I to them. I killed these men. Smashed in their head with a stone, felt their blood on my arms."

He stared again. Was he proud of this? He'd _known_ those two men. He'd had a barbecue with one of them. The other had fixed his plumbing. And here was Eko calmly talking about smashing their brains in with a rock. He curled his hands around his knees and was completely astonished by Eko's next words.

"I need you to know how sorry I am for this. I need you to know that I am back on the righteous path now and that I regret my actions. I ask you for your forgiveness."

It was very rare that his mind was a complete blank, but for a moment it was blank before a million thoughts came flooding in. _Forgive him?_ Was he saying this because he knew who he was? Had Goodwin betrayed anything? _Forgive him?_ He'd killed people himself and never felt the need to go ask their friends for forgiveness. Forgive him? Whatever for?

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I needed to tell someone."

Eko pulled a very large knife out of his belt, and the Henry Gale part of himself flinched. Maybe he flinched too. But the knife didn't go anywhere near him. Instead it moved slowly up to near the man's throat. Was he going to kill himself? As expiation for the horrendous sin of defending himself when he was attacked? He considered shouting for help but didn't, decided to watch and see if the man would do it.

He didn't. He grasped the little nub-like pieces of hair on his beard and sliced them off in a highly significant manner. When he held them up, Henry very nearly held up his hand automatically for them but managed to restrain himself. Eko put the knife away and stood up, staring down at him for a moment. He had a feeling that Eko was not one of the people he could ever best in a straightforward fight. The best thing to do would be to bash him from behind across the back of the skull with a very large stick, like the one he had given Locke. Even that might not be enough, but he would keep it in mind, just in case.

Eko went to the door and slapped it, went out without another glance. Henry sat still on his cot, slightly recoiled back and staring at the closed door. Forgiveness? He wasn't even sure he knew what that was.

Score: Henry Gale 5; Survivors 2.


	11. The Genius

_The Genius_

He was trying to get some sleep. It was difficult, with the alarm and with Shephard and Locke periodically shouting at each other (not that that wasn't interesting to listen to), and made even more difficult by the fact that he kept waking up with a start, his heart racing, expecting to see Eko bending over him holding out those ridiculous pieces of his beard.

The lock clicking woke him. Locke came in with a green bowl and a spoon. He sat up slowly, feeling stiff and sore, purposefully making the stiffness more pronounced. He took the bowl and saw that it was full of sliced mangoes and banana.

"No cheeseburgers, huh?" he said with slight amusement.

"No cheeseburgers. Bon appétit." He took lunch's bowl and glass from the ledge. But he wasn't getting away that easily.

"Is that true, what you said about Hemmingway?"

"You have good ears."

"You have thin doors." So what if they knew he could hear nearly everything they said? They probably couldn't imagine what he could do with the stray things he heard.

Locke set the bowl and glass back down. "You read Hemmingway?"

"Sure. Guy ran with the bulls, fought in the Spanish Civil War. Stuff I can wrap my brain around. This I can't get through five pages of." He nodded at the fat book on the cot, feeling some contempt for his Henry Gale.

Locke shrugged. "Hmm. Dostoyevsky had his virtues too. He was a genius, for one. Bullfighting isn't everything."

_Thus says the man running around the Island skewering wild boar with a knife when only a few weeks ago you were a man in a cubicle._ He gave a slight laugh-like snort. "So which one are you?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Are you the genius? Or are you the guy who always feels like he's living in the shadow of the genius?"

Locke's smile slowly faded. Eventually he shrugged. "I was—" He looked down. "I was never very much into literary analysis."

He gave a nod of understanding at the total non-answer and examined his bowl as if it contained mysteries to uncover. When Locke picked up the empty bowl and glass again, he sent out another volley. "I just don't understand why you let the doctor call the shots."

Locke turned slowly back and stared at him, a disturbed expression on his face. He ate a bite of banana as if he hadn't noticed.

"No one calls the shots. Jack and I make decisions together."

"Right. OK," he said quickly—too quickly, with his mouth full, placatingly. He chewed and gave an uncomfortable, I've-put-my-foot-in-my-mouth cough. "My mistake." He shook his head self-deprecatingly, looked up at Locke, looked quickly away, and stabbed at banana with his fork.

Locke turned and went out quickly. Dishes rattled, water ran, and then suddenly there was the sound of breaking dishes. Not just one dish, accidentally knocked on the floor, but several, and then it happened again. The Great White Hunter Locke losing his cool because of two sentences from his prisoner. He really had issues with Shephard's leadership. With other people telling him what to do? With being the center and linchpin of nothing? Apparently it wasn't enough that the Island had given him something miraculous and the chance to be everything he'd always dreamed of. He filed that away for future use.

Score: Henry Gale 6; Survivors 2.


	12. The Deal

_The Deal_

Shephard had let him wash again that morning and, impatient, grilled him for more answers while he was doing it. Why would you want to travel in a balloon? How many days were you on the Island? Why wouldn't you hear the plane crash? Where is your balloon now? He had plausible answers for all of them, delivering them in just the right combination of annoyance, desire to be believed, resignation that he wouldn't be, and staunchly-restrained fear. It didn't so much matter that he was believed as that whatever he said elicited a self-betraying response. All Shephard's responses would help him decide what tack to take with him when they had him in custody. Henry Gale would die eventually—not literally, he hoped.

Meanwhile, Henry Gale was a very grotesque figure. His cuts had sealed into dark red little lines, and his whole face was a charming combination of yellow and purple. The chopped-up orange shirt hanging off his bandaged shoulder added a grubby and pathetic note that he quite approved of.

When he had sufficiently irritated Shephard by answering all his questions without error and getting in a few of his own, the doctor locked him back in the armory. Shephard clearly wanted him to be—well, precisely who he was, so that he would have answers for his people and so he could stop feeling guilty for his shoulder and his face and keeping him locked up. If he found out the truth, he would be able to redirect his anger away from himself and onto The Enemy. Guilt was always a very useful thing, and Shephard had it in spades. Locke, though, was slightly more fun to mess with.

He redirected his attention back to Dostoyevsky. Outside he heard the sound of the shower running. As a child with the Dharma Initiative, he never once thought that a shower would be one of the main things he would miss when he finally got to join his own people. But it wasn't until several years after the Purge, when he and Richard finally deposed Charles, that he managed to convince his people to move into the lovely yellow houses that had stood empty all that while, and then he realized how much he missed showers. And electricity and reading lights and photographs on walls and bookshelves. He could hunt, he could track, he could move silently on bare feet in the jungle, he could shoot a dart at an enemy from a hundred yards, but he was essentially a man of civilization. He enjoyed cleanliness and book clubs and meals eaten at a table off plates. It wasn't until he had Alex that he realized it was alright to want to raise her with these things, as long as they both recognized that they weren't the truly important part of life. Sometimes he thought she didn't understand yet. She was always holding on to the unimportant things. Well, she would learn, just like he had.

Over the sound of the shower came the sound of the lock. It really was terribly convenient that he always had so much prior warning when someone was going to come in. It almost took away the challenge.

Locke opened the door and let in a young woman. Short, pretty, golden-complexioned, dark-eyed, long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, clad in jeans and a black tank-top. Ana Lucia Cortez. Ex-cop, murderer. Small, beautiful, and very dangerous. The credit for killing Goodwin went to either her or Eko, and he was betting on her, because Eko had only confessed to the murder of two "Others," not three. She smiled at him. She had a nice smile which, for a bare moment, lessened the dark, angry unhappiness of her eyes.

"Hello, Henry. I'm Ana Lucia. Is it alright if I come in?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Not really," Locke said and closed the door.

"I'm not sure if I should be insulted," Cortez said.

"Sorry, but it's been like a parade. Everyone wants something, and no matter what I say, they don't believe me. Whose side are you on, and what do you want?"

"I want to help you." She sat down on the floor and put her arms across her knees, her position the very opposite of threatening. He wondered whether she had coordinated with Jarrah for a bad-cop, good-cop routine. "All this cloak-and-dagger stuff is a little silly. Either you're telling the truth or you're not. It can't be that hard."

"What are you, a cop?" he said like a joke, because short, pretty Hispanic girls were obviously not cops in Henry Gale's world.

She raised her eyebrows, as if sharing the joke. She was good. Too bad for her her nerves weren't steady enough to sustain her. But he could play along.

"Were you on the plane too?"

"I was in the tail section. We crashed on the other side of the Island."

He gave her an astonished look. "You walked across? All the way here?" She gave a dark smile, and he played to it. "That musta been fun."

"It had its moments." She smiled again, as if they had shared another joke, but it didn't go to her eyes. "So you gonna tell me your story, Henry?"

He closed his eyes and gave a slight groan. "Why bother? I've already told it to everyone, Jack, Locke, the big black guy that cut off his beard in front of me. Oh, yeah, and my buddy Sayid. You can see how much he liked my story." He tilted his head so that the light caught the full glory of his appalling face.

"So how about you try me?"

"I don't mean to be ungrateful, but why are you going to help me get out of here?"

Cortez paused. "On the other side of the Island, there was this guy with us. I was a hundred percent convinced that he wasn't on the plane. So I dug a hole, and I threw him in it."

He stared at her, as any reasonable person would do on hearing such a tale from such a person, though she was only confirming what Goodwin had reported. "And what happened?"

"I was wrong, and now he's dead."

He looked away as if disturbed.

"But good news for you, Henry: I don't make the same mistake twice. So how about you tell me your story?"

He looked over at her again and narrowed his eyes a little, like he was trying to decide whether he could trust someone who threw innocent people in pits. Finally he sighed. "Alright. _Again."_

Then he told her the story, differently than he had told Jarrah or Shephard. With them he had been reluctant, belligerent, afraid, in pain, or irritated, dragging it out in bits and pieces. Now he told it as a story, one that had happened to him. He waxed poetic about his balloon, which he said his wife had insisted on naming Glinda, because she had a slightly snide sense of humor. He talked about the pleasure of slow travel high above the ground in a balloon. When he described the terror of crashing and dwelt on it as if talking about it was therapy, he caught an answering expression on her face, the horror of the plane crash which no one, not even an experienced police officer, could get over immediately. He didn't cry about his wife's death, but it was only with great effort. He was very angry and confused about the net, unwilling to talk about what Jarrah had done to him. In the background he heard some very odd kind of music starting and Locke's and Shephard's voices faintly under its cover. He couldn't help but notice that Locke had brought Cortez in while Shephard was in the shower. More conspiracies?

Cortez stood up to stretch once he had finally stopped talking and was sitting listlessly on his cot, spent with his traumatic tale. He had a feeling she was beginning to believe him. Her police experience would never have brought her into contact with a criminal as intelligent and foresightful as he was, or as good an actor. He'd gotten so good at lying in his years with Dharma Initiative, and then in the later years of plotting against Charles with Richard, and on recruiting trips to foreign countries. Cops like her didn't deal with people like him.

"So let me get this straight: you and your wife travel around the world and crash here in a smiley-face balloon. Then she dies, you get captured by a French chick who brings you here, and then they lock you up."

He nodded acceptance of her evaluation. "It sounds kind of silly when you say it like that."

"Why don't you have a beard?"

_Well thought._ Every once in a while these people actually came up with something clever. If they learned to work together rather than sneaking around behind each other's backs, they might actually get somewhere.

"Because I shaved. Because I needed something…normal."

Cortez sat down beside him, a friendly expression on her face. He knew he was supposed to feel flattered at her attention. Instead he was amused.

"OK. So why don't you draw me a map to your balloon? We'll go out there, we'll find it, and everybody'll believe you."

"That's what they all keep asking me to do, draw a map!" he said in frustration. "And if I mess up, they'll crucify me."

"You flew around the world in a balloon, and you don't think you can draw up a good map?"

"Air travel—it's a different animal. It's about wind currents, and—"

Cortez said in what he thought of as a cop-voice, "Do you or do you not know where it is?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I know where it is." He gave her a broken look. "I went back there to bury my wife."

Cortez looked away from him, down, and he wondered why. Maybe other people's pain bothered her. "Why'd you do that?"

"Because that balloon was the closest thing we had to home," he said with a break in his voice. He stared intently at her and shook his head. "You people have been looking for someone to punish for everything that's happened to you. Someone to blame, and now you've got him." He gave a painful smile, shaking his head. "Doesn't matter what I do. I'm dead already."

"You draw up that map, Henry," Cortez said in a soft voice, a promising voice. "I'll find your balloon. But if you don't, things are gonna play out just like you said."

He stared at her for a long moment. He had already decided over the course of the conversation that it was time to let things move to the next level. Were they insightful enough to find out the truth, or would they stall at the balloon? It would be interesting to find out and to see what they did if they did find out. It was dangerous, of course, but most things were, in one way or another.

"Do you have a pen?"

Cortez grinned and pulled a pen out of her back pocket. He picked up his book and tore the title page out, with mental apologies to Dostoyevsky, took the pen with half a moment's contemplation of how easy it would be to overpower the little cop with just a pen, and scrawled out a rough map of where the ridiculous smiley-face balloon still hung in the trees.

"It's not exactly to scale," Cortez said.

"I'm a balloonist, not a cartographer."

She grinned. "Henry, we got us a deal. If your balloon is where you say it is, I'll make sure you get out of here."

"Thank you, Ana Lucia," he said solemnly. "If you do, I'm on your side."

"Side? There aren't sides, at least not among us."

"You apparently haven't heard Jack and Locke arguing."

She shrugged and went and slapped on the door. "Coming out!"

Shephard opened the door. He stared at Cortez for a moment with a slightly displeased expression; she stepped around him out of the armory. Before he closed the door, he glanced in at Henry, who leaned against the wall and stared at him, letting his expression be not very friendly. The door slid closed before Shephard's disturbed face.


	13. The Puppetmaster

_The Puppetmaster _

Cortez was going to be a bit of a puzzle, he thought over the long hours of that day. Jacob hadn't had any interest in her. She wasn't one of the good ones. He wondered precisely what made someone a good one or not. A Nigerian drug lord was, but an ex-cop wasn't. She could be very useful to him, though, if he handled her carefully. A live wire who was the most reasonable person he had talked to, dangerous because of her unpredictability. Goodwin had told how paranoid she'd gotten, and now she was the calm, logical one, while the cool-headed surgeon was all over the place. The Island, he'd found, tended to bring out all kinds of contradictory sides to people. The Island and pressure in general. That was why he had intended to put pressure on Shephard, to see what he was made of.

Cortez, though, he was going to have to keep an eye on her. The good-cop routine didn't fool him in the slightest. She was one of the most dangerous people among the survivors, likely to go off at any moment under any provocation. If he could figure out how to make her go off under _his_ provocation, though…he could use her as a weapon. She was already being used, in the power struggle between Locke and Shephard. Locke hadn't brought her in until Shephard was out of the way, and Shephard wasn't best pleased about it. But what Locke himself probably hadn't realized was that his choice to bring her in had been created by Henry's own dig at him about his power struggle with Shephard. He wondered what else he could make them do.


	14. The Cereal

_The Cereal_

No one said anything to him for the rest of the day. He'd thought that Locke would go with Cortez on the expedition to the balloon, but there the man was, bringing him his fish and rice for lunch and hardly saying a commonplace "Here you are" or anything. Then he thought perhaps Shephard had gone instead, but he came in in the evening to examine the wounded shoulder and said nothing more than was absolutely necessary, not answering Henry's innocent questions, either. The man was _stubborn,_ more so than Locke. He wasn't quite as intriguing as Locke. He was actually a little tiresome. But still, the exercise of breaking his will (he already had some very definite plans) was going to be very entertaining.

He hadn't heard Locke and Shephard or anyone else talking to each other all day. Maybe they'd learned their lesson and were going to another part of the station to argue. He still wondered why neither had gone with Cortez. Shephard was the kind of man who had to see with his own eyes, so why hadn't he gone to see? Unless…unless she hadn't told them about his map.

The thought made him smile. Cortez was certainly capable of playing her own game, and she was quite the free radical. Apparently his comment about sides had gotten to her. How many sides were there going to be among these people? Every man for himself? It wasn't like that with _his_ people—at least once they'd gotten rid of Charles. With them it was every man and woman for the Island.

Meanwhile he applied himself to Dostoyevsky. There really was nothing like imprisonment for getting time to read. He'd fallen naturally into a kind of rhythm of sleeping for a few hours (sometimes awakened by the alarm, sometimes not), waking and thinking or reading, then sleeping again. Sometimes he wasn't aware of whether it was day or night, until he heard voices outside. It was going to be like having jet lag, going back home.

He was reading, several sleeps after Cortez had come for her little chat and gone away again, when Shephard opened the door and looked in, raised his eyebrows. "How is it?" He nodded at the fat book.

_More significant than anything you've read recently,_ he thought, but he read out a pithy morsel he'd lighted on earlier. "'Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.' So what's the difference between a martyr and a prophet?"

"Either way, it sounds like you end up dead," Shephard said wryly.

He laughed softly. "That's the spirit," he said, amused and resigned.

"In the mood for some breakfast?"

He stared up at him. Shephard hadn't brought in any food. "Do I get a field trip?"

Shephard jerked his head toward the door, turned and went out, leaving it open. He followed, holding his right arm in his left as a kind of makeshift sling, looking around curiously to get a proper look at the Swan at last. A rounded room, with several wide doorways, a sink and stove in an island, many bookshelves, an alcove with a table and booths. Locke sat in the alcove, pouring cereal from a white Dharma box into a brightly-colored bowl. He stared as Henry followed Shephard out into the living area. Apparently Shephard hadn't discussed this little maneuver with him. Was it faint revenge for the Cortez maneuver yesterday? They seemed to delight in upstaging each other. Shephard was giving Locke a hard stare, a kind of challenge.

Henry approached the table, specifically to get a look into another room across the living area. He carefully didn't smile at catching a glimpse of the famous Swan dome and the ancient computer equipment. "What's the computer for?"

Shephard shook his head. "Nothin'."

He looked away with a knowing expression, sat down across from Locke, who was still staring at him. Along with the cereal there were two bowls, two settings of silverware, and a bowl of bananas. Had he been expecting a cozy little breakfast with his rival?

"Cereal? Wow! Where'd you guys get cereal?"

"It was down here all along," Locke said. "Pantry's full of food."

He took the box and looked into it, sternly contained his amusement. Dharma wheels, he used to think of them. Generic Dharma Cheerios. "How old is it?"

Locke rested his face against the backs of his fingers and looked impassive, saying nothing. Henry looked up at Shephard, towering over him at the table, and Shephard was equally silent.

He laughed. "You guys don't know much, huh? I mean, I'd be asking all kinds of questions about all this stuff down here… You guys don't even seem that curious."

"Do you want the cereal or don't you?" Shephard asked in an annoyed voice.

He poured cereal into the bowl Locke had set out for Shephard. Time for a little mischief. Of course, mischief wasn't the point. The point was to find out if Cortez had told them about the map, and the deeper point was to apply pressure and observe what happened. But he couldn't help it if it was so enjoyable.

"This must be my reward for good behavior, huh? I guess I earned myself some good will, by finally drawing that map for Ana."

They both stared at him, and he inwardly chortled.

"What map?" Locke asked.

He said in a disbelieving voice, "To my balloon."

Shephard pointed accusingly at Locke. "Did you—"

"No!"

He rolled his eyes at his cereal, raising his eyebrows. "Wow, you guys have some real trust issues, don't you?" He let a beat pass. "Guess it makes sense she didn't tell you. I mean, with the two of you fighting all the time." He ate some Dharma wheels with his fingers, said, crunching, "Of course, if I was one of them—these people that you seem to think are your enemies—what would I do?" He pretended to ponder. "Well, there'd be no balloon." More cereal, more crunching. "So I'd draw a map to a real secluded place. Like a cave or some underbrush. Good place for a trap. An ambush." More cereal. They were staring at him and listening as if he were telling them the most riveting tale. "And when your friends got there, a bunch of my people would be waiting for them." He glanced up at Shephard, whose face was uneasy, frightened, unsure. "Then they'd use them to trade for me." He let another beat pass, still staring at Shephard. "I guess it's a good thing I'm not one of them, huh?" He laughed quietly, said cheerily, "You guys got any milk?"

For a completely dumb moment, they stared at him. Then Shephard slammed a notebook down on the table. "Draw it again! The map to your balloon."

"I was joking," he said in a blank tone. "I was making a joke."

Shephard stared hard at him, unamused. Henry looked away, like he knew he'd made a blunder. Then he looked back repentantly.

"There's nothing out there besides my balloon. I was just frustrated. It was a stupid thing to say. I'm sorry."

Shephard still looked decidedly annoyed, Locke internally disturbed. "It's too late anyway. She's already long gone, Jack."

"So, what's done is done."

Locke nodded. "That's right."

Shephard nodded back, in a completely not agreeing manner. "Put him back in the armory." He grabbed his backpack and stalked out.

Locke stared after him. Henry raised his eyebrows with a sympathetic _Talk about overreacting_ expression, glanced at Locke, and shook his head.

"Why do you let him talk to you like that?"

Locke very slowly turned back and looked at him with a dark look. He got up in a rush and grabbed Henry by the shirt.

"Hey, wait, I—" He was being hauled by the shirt across the room.

"Shut up!" Locke growled. He shoved him violently into the armory.

"John!" he called. "I'm sorry—"

Locke slammed the door.

"John!"

There was silence outside, not even the sound of footsteps going away from the door. He stood on one side of it and knew Locke stood on the other side. So interesting how the smallest hint could make a man with a masterful air like Locke's simply burst. Yet more interesting was how the weak, pathetic, needy man who was the real John Locke had become the strong, purposeful outdoorsman whose outbursts seemed so out of character. What had the Island done to him? And why? He wasn't _anyone._

Score: Henry Gale 8; Survivors 2.


	15. The Lockdown

_The Lockdown_

A screech of electronic feedback made him nearly drop his book. He sat up as a faint female voice said, "_…lockdown."_

"What was that?" he called. When Locke didn't answer, he got up and went to the door. "John? What's the matter?"

_"Please proceed—"_ Static cut off the rest of the voice.

"John?"

He heard the voice again, but it was muffled by static. It was coming from some kind of loudspeaker system. He tried to remember what he'd read years ago about Swan procedures.

"Are you out there? What's that noise, John? What's going on? Talk to me!"

Locke shouted from outside, "Will you be quiet?"

Perhaps he didn't know either? "Just tell me what's happening? What—"

"Will you _shut up?"_ Locke interrupted.

Apparently he didn't. Henry was not about to give him any help. He was about to call again when the voice spoke again, muffled but measured. It was a moment before he could understand the words, but it was obvious what they were saying.

_"Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four."_

A countdown? He wondered what Locke was thinking about it.

"Maybe you should get Jack!" he called, with a certain amount of mischief.

_"Three."_

There were running feet, and Locke shouted just outside the door, "I said shut up!"

_"Two. One."_

A chime sounded through the whole station, melodious but alarming. Then there was a thunderous noise, crashing, metal screeching, crash upon crash. And then silence. He stared wildly at the door as if he could see through it.

"What happened?" he called.

There was a pounding sound, and then the florescent lights in his cell flickered.

"Hey!" Henry Gale would be scared out of his mind, possibly thinking of earthquakes. He made his voice tremble slightly. "What's goin' on? Are you still out there? John? John?"

"I'm here!"

"What were those noises? What's wrong? Did something—"

"Nothing is wrong!"

"I don't believe that!" he called, but it was enough of tormenting Locke. He sat down on his cot and waited. Either Locke would tell him, or he wouldn't. If he wouldn't, maybe he could goad him into it when he was done investigating.

Finally Locke called, "We're locked in!"

"_What?"_

Locke sounded slightly helpless. "These…blast doors came down. The whole living area is sealed off. I can't get out."

Interesting that his first impulse was to get out, not to figure out what was going on and why, as Henry would have done. Locke didn't like to be trapped. Understandable, of course, given the four years in the wheelchair. But, apparently, he couldn't use it to his advantage, either.

"Did you try to…pry…"

"Yeah, but I couldn't— Maybe…Maybe if the two of us—"

"You want me to _help_ you?"

"Yeah."

He almost laughed aloud. Time for the good-hearted Henry Gale to prove himself, just when Cortez was out potentially learning the truth about him? If she didn't (he had a feeling she was eager to believe him and prove she could do something right), helping Locke would seal his case as an innocent balloonist. Poor Shephard would be very discomfited. But if she did find out the truth, well, it would be useful to have Locke in his debt.

"And if I do help you get these doors up, then you're just going to lock me back in here, aren't you?" He allowed a slightly pathetic note to enter his voice. The lights flickered again.

"That's right."

He let a moment pass. "Then I'm gonna need your word, John. I'm gonna need your word that you're not going to let your…people do anything to me."

"Well, if you're who you say you are, then what are you worried about?"

_Are you so innocent that you really believe that?_ "Things have happened to them! Things that I have nothing to do with!" (He enjoyed saying that with a straight face.) "They've got no one to blame! Except for me. So I'm gonna need your word that you'll protect me! No matter what."

Now a moment passed on Locke's side, and then the lock clicked and the door opened. Locke stood there wearing his orange t-shirt and his dramatic scar and a worried and angry expression.

"Who are you?" he asked in a quiet voice.

"My name is Henry Gale," he answered, resigned, putting all the conviction he was master of into his voice. "I'm from Minnesota. And I crashed on this Island, _just_ like you."

Locke examined him and seemed to accept it. "Alright," he said softly. "You have my word." He turned and walked away.

Henry followed. The large doorways were now filled with massive, thick, curved blast doors of a very heavy metal. Try as he might, he couldn't remember if a lockdown procedure had been outlined in the Swan information he had read so long ago, nor what might have triggered it. Perhaps trying to get out was unwise. Lockdowns were triggered for a reason. Though it was true that sometimes the Dharma Initiative had done things just to find out how their subjects responded. Maybe that was where he had learned it, he thought, amused.

"There." Locke pointed to one of the doors, which was blocked less than an inch from the floor with a crowbar slid under it. "I got that under there before it hit the floor, but I wasn't able to raise it."

"Well, we won't be able to raise it with a crowbar."

"We've got some longer bars. We can lift the crowbar and slide one of these under." Locke strode to the exercise equipment in the corner and removed one of the bars of weights, slid the weights onto the floor next to a red toolbox. He laid the bar on the floor at the base of the door, next to the crowbar.

Henry came up next to him and knelt down at the end of the crowbar, tried to get his fingers under it. Locke took hold of the middle.

"OK."

"Ready," Henry said. "One two three."

They managed to get the crowbar up enough to get their fingers under it, then, straining, raised it slightly more. The door inched slowly up. It was horrifically heavy. Locke reached down and shoved the other bar under, and then the door slammed back down. Panting, Locke slid the crowbar out of the way, and they both squatted down to the new bar.

"Let's go," Locke said.

Straining, they raised the bar, gradually got to their feet. They had the door more than a foot off the floor, but it wouldn't go higher.

"Harder!" Locke gasped.

The bar was bending. Henry groaned with the effort and felt his feet sliding on the floor. "We're losing it!"

"The toolbox! Get the toolbox! I'll hold it!"

"You're sure?" Surely he could never hold it.

_"Get it!"_

He released his now tenuous grasp on the bar and ran for the toolbox.

"Come on come on! Put it under!"

He rushed the toolbox over, slid it under the sagging door. The door slid down and crushed the top, but it held, a little over a foot off the floor. Still kneeling on the floor, he leaned his head against the door and gasped in air. His shoulder and back were on fire, and without turning his head he could see that there was blood on his bandage. So much for the stitches Shephard was so careful over. He slowly got up, closing his eyes against the bloodrush to the head.

Locke was leaning on the bar like a staff, getting his own breath. After a moment he laid the bar on the floor, got down beside it, and began to slide his legs under the door.

"John! John, wait—don't just—"

Too late. The toolbox crushed, the door came down sickeningly on Locke's legs, and he screamed.

"John!" He rushed back to the door while Locke still screamed, got his back against it and his hands under it, straining to lift it, foolishly, because he knew he could never budge it himself. Locke had stopped screaming and was sitting up and trying to hold it off his legs as well, equally uselessly.

"You have to stop the door! Put something else under the door!"

The weights. He shouldn't have needed Locke to tell him that. He rushed to grab as many as he could lift.

"Come on come on!" Locke groaned. The door creaked. As Henry shoved the weights under the door, he shouted, "Stack 'em! Stack 'em!" and various other highly annoying and obvious instructions.

Then he had the door propped up. No way it was crushing seven weights. It stopped creaking and groaning.

He went to Locke's side. "Alright, alright. Let's get you back. Let's get you out. Come on." He got his arms around Locke's upper body and pulled.

"No no! Stop stop stop stop!" Locke screamed.

He stopped, peered under the door, and only then saw that one of the large rods set into the bottom of the door that fit into corresponding holes in the floor had punctured or crushed Locke's right leg. That had to be more unbelievably painful than an arrow through the shoulder. He gently lowered Locke's upper body to the floor.

"Alright, we'll wait till somebody comes to help, alright? It's only a matter of time, yeah?"

Locke gasped for a moment. "Yeah, only we don't have time."

Henry suddenly remembered the alarm with a sinking feeling. This presented an opportunity, however. He stared at Locke. "What do you mean?"

Locke opened his mouth to speak and then groaned, pounding the floor with his fists. Henry got up and went into the bathroom to see if he could find any painkillers, not that Shephard had given him any, but apparently the Dharma people hadn't seen fit to leave their Swan technicians any. He did find a towel, which he folded up and slid under Locke's head, taking some amusement in the gesture. To top it off, he fetched a bowl of water and a cloth and wiped the beads of sweat away from Locke's face. Better to leave the leg alone.

"Talk to me, John," he ordered. "What did you mean?"

"The room—with the computer—" Locke gasped. "The alarm goes off every hundred and eight minutes, and then the button has to be pushed."

_"What?"_

"There's a _button!_ On the keyboard. We enter a series of numbers and then push the button. There's not much time left!"

"What does it _do?"_

"W—we're not exactly sure."

He didn't laugh, but it was an effort. "And you push it—"

"Every hundred and eight minutes, yeah."

"How soon does this alarm go off?"

"Very." His voice was stronger. "Which is why I need you go to up through the grate and into the vents."

"Grate's bolted shut. I tried," he said with faint apology. He'd had to know all his options.

"Yeah," Locke said, as if he'd expected that. "There's another grate in the pantry. You can get up through there. Take the vent into the dome."

The lights flickered. Now that they were such good friends, Henry decided to start establishing his character as a follower, just in case. A follower of the strongest, with Shephard perceived to be the strongest. Let Locke stew on that. "Maybe we should wait for—"

"We can't wait! It's going to go off any minute. I trusted you, Henry, now you gotta trust me. That button has to be pushed!"

It was true. It did. It was just too amusing that Locke had no idea why. "OK. What do I do?"

"Once you're inside, you'll hear the alarm beeping, and you just have to enter the numbers. Four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-three, forty-two. And then you press Execute. It has to be exactly those numbers in exactly that order. Do you—"

"Four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-three, forty-two," he rattled off.

Locke nodded.

"I got it."

"Go."

"Alright," he said with courageous determination.

He got up and walked into the pantry, a larger room than the armory, with shelves scattered with the familiar, detestable Dharma food. He looked up at the square grate in the ceiling. Could he even fit through that?

"Can you reach it?" Locke called.

"I think so."

He climbed up the shelves closest to the grate as the lights flickered again, had to stand on the edge of a shelf and hold on with his injured arm, which hurt like the dickens, while reaching up for the grate. He couldn't quite reach it.

"Be careful!"

_Thanks, John. That's useful._

He stepped up onto the next shelf, which promptly gave way under his weight. He fell heavily to the floor amid a shower of food. The lights—in his head—went out, and everything was still and cold.


	16. The Button

_The Button_

Certain noises were competing for his reluctant attention. A repetitive blipping over the top of indistinct shouting. He pushed himself slowly up off the floor. Now a throb in his head joined the stabbing in his shoulder.

"Henry, are you alright?"

"What happened?" he panted.

"Listen to me! You have to get up into the vents and enter the numbers into the computer."

"How long was I—"

"Please, you have to go right now! We're running out of time!"

He remembered then what the blipping was for. "OK. Yeah." He got up, remembering what would happen to the entire Swan Station and perhaps the Island if he didn't get into that dome, and put the confusion and pain behind him.

"Be careful!"

_ You said that last time, and it didn't help._

This time he pulled one of the metal shelves directly under the grate and tested each shelf before he put his weight on it. Kneeling on the top one, he pushed the grate up into the vent and got his shoulders up into the square hole, looked around the dark space. The place was made to be crawled in. He pulled himself in easily, lay panting for a moment, still slightly shaken, and then determinedly started off in the direction of the dome.

There were a few branches to the vents, but he had a general idea of the right direction and went that way. The alarm partly led him, becoming louder as he got closer. Then it was right below him, and as he peered down into the grate, the polite blipping was replaced by a strident alarm. It made him jump and nearly knock his head on the top of the vent. Far away he heard Locke shouting but didn't bother to respond. He pulled up the grate, shoved it aside, and looked down through the hole. There was nothing below to step down onto, so he simply stuck his legs through the hole, lowered himself down, and let himself drop.

The impact hurt, but he was instantly up and running across the room to the computer. The flipping numbers on the timer up on the wall showed three seconds left. Deliberately he stood and looked at the timer while it counted down. When it reached zero, the alarm shrieked, and red and black symbols flipped frantically in place of the black and white numbers. Rapidly he typed in the numbers Locke had told him and hit Execute (_It's a key, Locke, not a button)._ Instantly the alarm stopped and the hieroglyphics flipped over to a black and white 108.00.

He wanted to stay and look over all the equipment, but perhaps Locke would let him look at them later. He pulled a wheeled cart up under the vent, very, very gingerly climbed up on it, and pulled himself up, a much more difficult proceeding than previously, though he was fairly fit, for his age, size, and weight. No sooner had he got up than the lights flickered one last time and went out together. He froze in the vent, heard Locke shouting, didn't answer, heard him go silent.

After ten or fifteen seconds, the lights came back on, and as he resumed crawling toward the living area, he heard the thundering and groaning again. Were the doors going back up, or was something else happening? He crawled rapidly back to the pantry and climbed down the shelf. Coming out of the pantry, he saw that the doors had receded into the ceiling. Locke was shouting for him. He saw the man's legs disappearing into the dome room. He was dragging himself along by the arms (surely not the first time he'd ever done that). Henry decided to let him stew a moment, following him quietly in, still regaining his breath.

"Henry? Anybody here? Is anybody here? _Henry!"_ Then Locke heard the sound of his footsteps and wrenched himself around on the floor, stared, then collapsed back on the floor. "You came back."

He came and leaned over him. "What, did you think I was gonna leave you here?" He put a hint of suggestion in his voice, like, _I might have._ He might have indeed, but he wasn't here to escape. "Come on. Can you stand?"

"I don't… I think so."

Henry carefully helped him up. He cried out as he stood and staggered back against the wall, leaned his head against it. After a moment he reached out and patted Henry on his unwounded shoulder.

"Thank you, Henry. Thank you for not leaving me."

"You're welcome, John," he said, holding his eyes, sharing the bond of suffering, or some such equally over-dramatic twaddle. The masculine bonding was going very well.

Score: Henry Gale 9; Survivors 2.


	17. The Cop

_The Cop_

He helped Locke to the couch on one side of the living area, practically carrying him over. The man must have a high pain tolerance, to stand up under what had been done to his legs.

"I gotcha," he said, helping him lower himself to the couch.

"Easy—easy!" Locke groaned.

He grabbed a pillow from the couch, set it on the coffee table, and gingerly lifted Locke's injured leg. Locke gasped.

"Sorry," he said with sincerity, as one giving a good friend pain. He rested the leg on the pillow, sat on the coffee table, and began to tear the pant leg away from the wound.

Locke started talking determinedly. "What did you do? What did you do to end it? Make the doors go up?"

"I did what you told me to. I punch in the code and I press the Execute button. But nothing happened. Other than that clock flipping back." He went over to the sink and poured a glass of water. "I was just climbing back into the vent when the lights went out. Ten seconds later, the doors went up. I didn't do anything."

"You think it was all…just random?"

He was amused at Locke, who now believed his story, asking _him_ what he thought his precious hatch was doing. He gave him a bewildered look. "Don't look at me." He came back and gave the water to him. "It's your hatch."

"Get away from him!"

They both started and stared up at Shephard striding into the room, his finger pointing at Henry. Directly behind him came Jarrah with his gun also pointed at Henry, followed by Cortez. Then two more people came, whom Henry quickly identified as Kate Austen and Charlie Pace. Pace he had no interest in, but Austen was on his list. But how many people had Cortez invited along on her expedition?

"Wait—you don't—" he was saying while his mind was evaluating the situation.

Jarrah interrupted with his gun pointed at him. "Step back right now!"

"Sayid, it's OK," Locke said, holding out his hand.

Shephard ran across the room and jerked Henry up and against the wall. "I said get away!"

"It's alright!" Locke repeated. "I let him out! There was…some kind of lockdown or something—he—he was helping me!"

Shephard glared at him.

Henry was impatient with the arguing. He stared with a frightened expression beyond Shephard and Jarrah to Cortez, whose face was dark, her eyes stony. "Couldn't you find my balloon?"

"Yeah, we found it." Beside her Pace was staring at him with a baleful expression, and Austen stared at everyone incredulously.

"We did find your balloon, Henry Gale," Jarrah said, "exactly how you described it." He lowered his gun. "We also found the grave you described." He came closer. "Your wife's grave. The grave you said you dug with your own bare hands." He moved close to him.

_I didn't say that. You thought it up and ascribed it to me._ He stared at the angry Iraqi with an uncertain and scared face.

"It was all there. Your whole story, your alibi. It was true. But still I did not believe it to be true, so I dug up that grave and found that there was not a woman inside, there was a man." He pulled from his pocket a driver's license and held it up in front of Henry's face. He already knew it well. "A man named Henry Gale."

It would be Jarrah who found it, not Cortez. So much for her. True, Jarrah was extremely intelligent and intuitive, but he hadn't expected Cortez to let him do everything. Of course, there was a certain amount of power in letting other people do things for you, but the real power was in _making_ them do it without knowing you wanted them to do it. Maybe some day he'd let Jarrah do something for him. If he outlived his anger.

He gave him and Shephard a look of resigned fear. Now he would be the low man on the totem pole who had been sent to do a job perhaps to big for him. He could make up as many roles as he needed to.

"Did you kill him?" Jarrah snarled at him, bringing his gun up again. "_Did you?"_

"Sayid!" Shephard pushed Jarrah back slightly. "Put him in the armory. You can question him there. If you can control yourself! John, what on earth happened to you? Kate, want to give me a hand?"

Shephard and Austen together helped Locke up while Jarrah seized Henry by the back of the neck and shoved him back into the armory. Behind he could hear Locke explaining what had happened.

"Against the wall! Against the wall, and don't move! Ana Lucia, see if you can find some rope."

Cortez disappeared. Henry stood against the far wall, his hands spread out. Jarrah stood a few paces away with the gun trained on him, saying nothing, and he said nothing in return. Nothing he would say would convince Jarrah. The man seemed to have an instinct for truth. If he was ever to make him do something, he would have to use the truth, but it was not time for the truth. He would have to depend on Cortez to protect him from Jarrah's temper, since Locke was incapacitated. He could still make her believe him.

She came back with a long length of cord.

"Cut it in two," Jarrah ordered, which she did with a large pocket knife. He gave her the gun. "Shoot him if he tries anything." He took one half of the rope, grabbed Henry's right arm, tied it around his wrist, and then climbed up on the ledge, threaded the rope through a hook in the ceiling (who put hooks in the ceiling of an armory?), and pulled Henry's arm up with a sharp and painful jerk. He didn't hide the agony of it. Agony was perfectly appropriate for his new role. Cortez held the gun steadily and didn't change expression, but her eyes had a dark look, and he wondered whether she was struggling between anger and sympathy. He could only hope she was.

Jarrah took the second half of the rope and did the same with his left arm, so that his arms spread out wide in an entirely inappropriate crucifixion pose. He took the gun back from Cortez and put it in his back waistband, then sat down on Henry's cot. "Would you see how John is?" he asked her.

She put her eyebrows up and went out. _Do you like being his lackey?_ Henry thought scornfully. He let his head droop down toward his shoulder. There was a slightly alarming amount of blood on his bandage. All this movement was either good physical therapy or would permanently impair his arm.

There was silence for a moment as Jarrah stared at him. He could hear Locke and Shephard talking through the open door. Locke seemed to be arguing for him, Shephard responding with flat skepticism. They all believed he or his people had foolishly overlooked Henry Gale's wallet. There wasn't one of them who would do such a stupid thing. It was his own decision.

"Tell me about Henry Gale," Jarrah said in the old, soft interrogator-tone.

"He was dead already," he said mournfully, staring at the floor, as Cortez paused in the doorway, then came inside and leaned against the ledge. "Four months ago. I was part of the search party. Henry Gale was hanging out of the basket, neck broken."

Cortez held up a questioning hand with a bewildered expression, but Jarrah flashed out a warning hand at her.

"So he was already dead," he said.

"Yes," Henry said in a frustrated, _isn't that obvious?_ tone. The layers of lies he was prepared to go through were delicately balanced, easily upset, each one uncovering the new one beneath it. The lies didn't matter. What they uncovered did.

"Then you buried him and left the grave marker."

"_Yes."_

Cortez gave him one of her dark looks, with perplexity in it. _If you knew who I really am, Cortez, you would kill me, because I am responsible for everything that has happened to you here, and I would do it again. But in your eyes I will be as much of a victim as you._

"You really should have checked his wallet before you did that." Jarrah pulled the twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and dramatically uncrumpled it, turned it around so Henry could see its scribbled-on face. Henry already had it memorized, but he stared at it with complete incomprehension, curling his hands nervously around the ropes holding his arms up.

"I assume Henry Gale did not have any paper upon which to compose his thoughts, so he had to improvise. There wasn't much space for that."

Now he let horrified nervousness come over his face. Coming up with different faces to make took his mind off his shoulder. But really, this was all positively medieval.

"'Jennifer,'" Jarrah read, "'Well, you were right. Crossing the Pacific isn't easy. I owe you a beer. I'm hiking to one of the beaches to start a signal fire, but if you're reading this, I guess I didn't make it. I'm sorry. I love you, Jenny. Always have, always will. Yours, Henry.'" He folded the bill and put it in his pocket while the false Henry, who had decided to stubbornly hold on to the name, tried to look foolish and shell-shocked. "So tell me, how did Henry Gale write a note to his wife with a broken neck?"

He opened his mouth to speak, visibly reaching, faltered. He appealed to Cortez. "Wasn't me. I didn't kill him!" She looked away from him. "You don't understand!" he said frantically.

"How did you know his wife's name? Did you interrogate him?"

This, he realized, was a real error. Supposedly he didn't know Henry Gale had had a wallet in his pocket with his wife's name in it, and these people knew nothing about his powers of research thanks to the Flame and the submarine. Time to deflect attention away from _that._

"Please, just listen! I'm just a—a—"

"How many of you are there?"

He gasped in fear. "If I tell you about them, you have no idea what he'll do!" _Them_ was a good touch. He was a victim. He was Juliet. Only she had started identifying with them.

"_He?"_

The _he_ was good too. Did he mean himself by it, as the leader of his people? Or Jacob, the Island's real power? Did it matter?

"You mean their leader," Cortez said. "The guy with the beard." He looked up at her slowly. She had accepted his phrasing. She was believing the emotions he was portraying. He'd meant her to, but at the same time it was a weakness in her.

"_Him?_ He's no one! Nothing!" How easily people believed that the loud, forceful person who did all the talking was the leader. These people wouldn't believe that the little scared man they pushed around so easily was the real leader and mastermind. Not until they saw it.

"Where are your people?" Jarrah asked. _He_ wasn't accepting the _Them_ ploy.

"I can't—"

He shouted, "How many of you are there?"

"You don't understand!"

"Understand this!" He jumped up from the cot, pulling his gun out again, and pointed it at Henry, who flinched.

"Hey," Cortez said in a calming cop-voice.

"You have three seconds to answer my question. How many of you are there?"

While Jarrah spoke, Henry's mind went quickly through his options. Jarrah intended to kill him. Cortez was in cop mode and did not intend to let him, but she might not be quick enough. If he did die, Richard would take leadership for the interim and decide on another leader, though at present he couldn't see who among his people that might be. _Not_ Tom Friendly. He was a good butler. That was about it. Isabel would want it, but he wasn't sure about her. Once he'd thought it would be Alex, but there was no indication that she was going to come out of this irrationally teenaged stage any time soon. But that would be Richard's problem. His current problem was figuring out how to make himself as sympathetic as possible. Unkillable. He gave Cortez a perfectly terrified look.

"One," Jarrah said.

"He'll kill me!" he cried out.

"_I'll_ kill you." He cocked the gun and aimed again, and Henry flinched away, nearly crying into his shoulder. "Two."

"Sayid!" Cortez exclaimed.

"You can't do this! I am not a bad person!"

"Three."

Everything at once was excruciatingly slowed down and blew by in a frantic rush of motion. Jarrah's finger squeezed the trigger; Cortez launched herself at him, pushing his arm up; the bullet went off and ricocheted dangerously around the room; Cortez whipped Jarrah around with his arm behind his back and disarmed him. He was frozen, dimly hearing her shouting at Jarrah, dimly hearing Locke shouting outside the room. Shephard swam into his view, coming running, demanding what was going on.

"He's a _liar!"_ Jarrah shouted above everyone else.

"It's fine," Cortez said in a very cop-like, reasonable voice that contained anger behind it. "Just get him out of here." She glared at Jarrah, who glared back.

"Jack!" Locke shouted from the outer room.

Recovered, Henry raised his head and stared at Shephard with a terrified expression. _Now you know—ostensibly—who I am. What will you do with me?_

"Jack!" Locke shouted again. He did not like not knowing what was going on.

Jarrah turned and walked out. Shephard followed as Locke bellowed again, and Henry heard him calling back in a frustrated voice, "I've got it covered, John!"

_No, actually Cortez does. You control less than you think you do, Shephard. Locke wants information, anyway, not control._

He gave Cortez a fervent look. _"Thank you."_

"Shut up!" She walked out and closed the door.

Now he let the reaction hit him. He leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and gasped with relief.

Score: He had to give this one to the survivors. Henry Gale 9; Survivors 3.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: Thank you to my friend Pickwick12 for her description of Alex as irrationally teenaged.<strong>


	18. The Lie

_The Lie_

He'd been standing there against the wall for an absurd amount of time, both arms on fire. He reiterated the medievalness of the whole situation in his mind, which made him feel just slightly better about the ridiculous position. All that was needed was the Spanish Inquisition. Did Jarrah count? Probably not. Was he becoming lightheaded? Probably.

After about a million years, the door opened, and Shephard came in with Cortez behind him. Without a word he climbed up on the ledge and untied the rope. Henry's right arm fell against his side, and he cried out, involuntarily. He hung heavily on the left rope. Shephard stepped up on the cot and untied that one, and as his left arm fell, his head swam. Cortez caught him when his legs buckled and set him down on his cot and back against the wall. He occupied his mind with calculating how much energy it would take to knock her down and make a run for it, not that he had the energy or any intention of doing it. Shephard handed her the ropes and Henry a bottle of water (Dharma bottle); he fumbled with the cap with numb fingers and drank deeply.

"Do you think you could—" He nodded at his shoulder. He thought he could feel it bleeding again.

"Shut up," Shephard said, but he pulled new bandages and tape out of his bag. Cortez was tying the ropes together. "Who is the leader you told Sayid and Ana Lucia about?"

"I thought you said to shut up," he muttered. Shephard was not amused, and he cringed just slightly. "Sorry. But I can't tell you. I'm more afraid of him than of Sayid. You have no idea what he'll do—what he's made us do."

"You know, I'm going to make it a point not to believe anything you say."

"Then why bother asking questions?" he muttered.

Shephard taped the second bandage to his back unnecessarily hard. "Ana Lucia, tie him up."

Cortez was a very thorough tier-upper. She made him put his feet up on the cot, tied his ankles together, looped the rope around the back of his neck, wound it around his wrists, put his arms down between his legs, and bound his wrists to his ankles. She didn't look sorry for it, either. It was phenomenally uncomfortable.

"Don't you try moving around a lot, wiggling out of this," Shephard warned. "Your shoulder needs a chance to close up again."

"Who do you think I am, Houdini?"

"How do you even know who Houdini is, living in the jungle on an Island like this?"

"I looked him up on Wikipedia. We have a special jungle Wikipedia."

Shephard grabbed his bag and walked out.

"You got a smart mouth, Henry," Cortez said. "It's going to get you into trouble."

"Worse than this, you mean?"

"What's your real name, Henry?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why do you work for this leader, if he's so awful?"

He gave her an incredulous look. "This isn't America, Ana. You can't just vote him out. And anyway, he's _great._ A very great man. Very powerful."

She got down and thrust her face close to his. "And _why_ did he send you people to kidnap us?"

He pressed his lips tightly together and stared at his bound hands.

"You have to talk sometime."

_No, I don't. Good idea, though, Cortez._

She locked the door behind her, and he was left alone. His book was at the far end of the cot, and he stared at it longingly. To get to it he would have to fall over on his face and attempt to wriggle over to it and grab it with his teeth. Not really worth it. Reading without his reading glasses had been giving him a headache anyway. Plotting his next moves would be a better use of his time. He still needed to find out what was going on with Locke and the Island. The strategy for Shephard and his temper and stubbornness was now a given. Locke was the important thing to investigate at the moment. He was realizing, with some reluctance, that Locke was intended to be his weapon, not Cortez. That would be harder and far more annoying to accomplish. But Cortez was nothing more than a distraction. It was really too bad Jacob didn't care about the potential she offered.

After a long time (the alarm had gone off several times), he began to hear the sound of crutches on the concrete floors outside. Locke should not be on that leg, of course, but Henry couldn't quite see him contentedly lying in bed or wheeling about in his old wheelchair, amusing as the mental picture was. He'd heard Shephard's voice earlier, but not for a while; he must have left, or he would be shouting at Locke about being a fool.

The alarm went off again and stopped again. His position had become unbelievably painful, but what was new in this experience? He strained to hear the conversation he could hear faintly through the door.

"Five minutes. I earned five minutes with him," he heard Locke say.

He grinned to himself and then bowed his head disconsolately. The rope did make his neck hurt.

The lock clicked. The door opened. Locke hitched himself in the narrow doorway on his crutches and gave the waiting Cortez a look. She gave him a look back and closed and locked the door. Locke took a deep breath and stared at Henry with an almost defeated expression. He remembered that he'd betrayed him, in a way. They'd had a manly bonding experience; he'd made him believe in him, only to be revealed as the enemy. The Enemy. He couldn't help that. He didn't much want to. He was getting sick of Locke's smug sense of purpose. Other than himself, he knew only one other person with a strong sense of purpose, and Richard wore it deep inside and rarely talked about it.

"What's your name? Your real name?"

He didn't look up. "Why don't you just keep calling me Henry? I've gotten used to it."

Locke moved further into the room and leaned against the ledge. "Did you get caught on purpose?"

_Like I'm going to tell you._

"You and your people have been here for God knows how long, and you got caught in a net?"

It was about time someone thought of that. "God doesn't know," he said in something more like his real voice than he had used before.

Locke stared. "Excuse me?"

He looked up slowly with bleak eyes. "God doesn't know how long we've been here, John. He can't see this Island any more than the rest of the world can. May I ask you a question?"

Locke gave a resigned nod.

"What possible reason could I have for putting myself through all this?" he asked with a certain amount of pleasure in the idea that a man like Locke could never come up with the answer to that.

"Maybe…your people were looking for this place."

"This place? This place…is a joke, John!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I crawled through your vents, and I stood at your computer as the alarm beeped, and you know what happened? The timer went all the way down to zero, and then some funny red pictures flipped up in its place. They looked like hieroglyphics—but I'm no expert. And then things got real interesting. There was a loud…clunking, and a hum. Like a magnet, a big magnet." (He knew about this from the old Swan records of what had happened when someone neglected to enter the code on time. He had been just slightly too swift himself. He relished Locke's expression.) "It was really very frightening. And do you know what happened next? Nothing happened, John. Nothing happened at all. Your timer just…flipped back to 108." Locke was trying to be impassive. "I never entered the numbers. I never pressed the button." He stared at Locke with perfect conviction.

"You're lying."

He gave a small, slow headshake. "No, I'm done lying." And he put as much conviction into that lie as into any other, because he could.

And Locke was shaken. He stared, disturbed, upset, then turned and knocked on the door without another word.

(Much, much later he would realize that trying to destroy Locke's faith in The Button was not necessarily the best thing. Much, much later, after exile, after loss, he would realize that trying to kill Locke twice was not necessarily the best thing. In fact, nothing he had done with Locke had been right. But for now, all that mattered was beating him, because there was something very discomfiting about him, and he did not suffer being discomfited.)

Score: Henry Gale 10; Survivors 3.


	19. The Strike

_The Strike_

He didn't say another word for the next to days. Hunger strike time. It offered some amusement to watch their song and dance when they couldn't make him respond to anything.

They left him tied up the way he was the rest of the day and night, and no one went into his cell. As long as he didn't die of an infection in his shoulder, he could die of hunger? That was what made him decide to turn his silence strike into a hunger strike. A few days without food and water was nothing. Charles had done worse to him once, back in the days of his own rise to power. Under his father he had learned not to fear pain. Under Charles he'd learned not to fear much else. Thankfully, Richard had stopped trying to protect him after they'd quarreled about it during the first year after the Purge.

"I just don't want you to get hurt!" Richard had said, as if he was his mommy.

"Hurt? What does hurt have to do with it? The Island will let happen to me whatever happens to me. Charles doesn't realize he's only making me stronger. Our people will see that I can take anything he can give and thrive on it, and when it's time to get rid of him, they'll willingly follow me." And Richard had accepted that.

He wondered if, unconsciously, he was trying to use the same tactic on Alex. _Can't you see I'm making you stronger, Alex?_ He'd never raised a hand against her; instead he'd taught her to defend herself against anyone who would try to do so. He'd never told her her mother nearly killed her through insanity and neglect. He'd given her good, false memories of a nonexistent mother. He wouldn't be his father. He'd been very purposeful about that. But she couldn't understand that everything else he did was to make her strong. He intended her to lead their people someday. Why couldn't she see that?

He forced his mind away from Alex. He wasn't thinking about all that mess, not here, not now.

His first visitor during his hunger-silence strike was Cortez. He'd passed an interminable night lying uncomfortably on his side, still pinioned, trying to sleep, sometimes succeeding. He heard her come in but lay still, pretending to still be asleep.

"I brought you some food, Henry. John says you want to be called Henry. Seems disrespectful to me, but we have to call you something." She untied the ropes connecting his wrists to his ankles and loosened his feet, leaving his wrists tied. "You can come use the bathroom, but just remember that I have a gun, and I _will_ shoot you in your other shoulder if I have to."

He very slowly straightened his legs, clenching his jaw against a groan. She waited until he had managed to stand and take a step, then jerked her head at the door. "Come on."

The bathroom had been cleaned out of anything that might remotely be considered a weapon. Soap was just about the only thing there. Cortez stood in the doorway.

"I'm not leaving, so get on with it."

He turned his back on her. He longed for a shower but didn't even look toward it. Water on the face would suffice and felt like heaven. His cuts were all healing, and his face was largely yellow.

Cortez locked him back up, leaving his hands tied but no more, and didn't seem to notice that he hadn't said a word.

She brought him lunch (was Locke on strike too?) and then noticed that the oatmealish stuff she had brought for breakfast was untouched.

"Not hungry, Henry?"

He was sitting on his cot with his hands folded together, staring down at them and saying nothing in his expression. The clicking of the lock had given him time to put _The Brothers Karamazov_ down in its place as if he had never touched it and had been sitting exactly like this the whole time.

"Pouting now? You've brought all this on yourself, Henry. Nobody likes spies."

She slid the door closed behind her.

She brought his dinner as well. Locke really must be perturbed. There hadn't been a day so far when he hadn't been in at least once to talk, ask questions, or give inscrutable stares.

"Still not eating? What is this? Do you think you're Gandhi now?"

His only response was a tightening of his fingers to keep himself from laughing aloud. It really was almost a pity she wasn't one of Jacob's Candidates. She would be fun to keep around, more so than Austen, though Austen was much prettier. As it was, it would be wiser to eliminate his unfortunate, though mild, attachment to her. He couldn't afford distractions. She was unimportant as well as dangerous. He couldn't forget how easily she and her people had killed three of his.

She sighed when he gave no response. "I want to know what game you're playing, Henry. You'll tell me eventually."

He glared after her as she locked the door. She was so sure. She had no idea that his map had nothing to with her own cleverness or excellence at the good-cop game. Everything he had done had been his own cold-blooded choice. As killing her would be. She would have to be judged for her crimes. That was what Jacob would want.

Not eating, and especially not drinking, had become uncomfortable by evening and tomorrow would be decidedly unpleasant. By the next day hunger would have faded in light of the thirst, but it would return in full force on the fourth day. He was not quite sure how long he would keep this up. He would have to see what sort of effect it had.

Soon after Cortez had gone out with his unemptied lunch dish, leaving the dinner of fish and fake potatoes, which he didn't even look at, though the water bottle was difficult to ignore, he heard her telling Shephard about his strange new behavior.

"You might want to give him a checkup, Jack."

"Let him sit and pout, Ana Lucia. There's no point to a protest. He's just being stubborn and trying to make you feel bad. I'll look at him tomorrow and make sure he's not trying to kill himself."

That night he dreamed about Alex and woke up with tears on his face, which he couldn't help—he never yet had figured out how to control his sleep. She really had meant it, what she said so few weeks ago. He'd told her he was going to die—he'd wanted to wound her, so that she would throw her arms around him and say she was sorry and no—he couldn't die, and he would comfort her and share his plans for her future, and everything would be as it once had been. Dying might be worth that. But instead she'd said she was _glad,_ and feeling that had been like feeling Rousseau's crossbow bolt. Why was it that Alex, his own daughter, the one person who really meant something to him, was the only person on this Island he couldn't control? Why was she the one whose remembrance made him weak, when getting shot, beat up, and imprisoned couldn't?


	20. The Quest

_The Quest_

Locke finally came in in the morning, probably out of curiosity. He looked disquieted and hadn't been shaving. He stood staring at Henry, who sat on his cot staring at nothing.

"What's your game, Henry?"

He said nothing, didn't even look up at him.

"What do you think this is going to get you?"

He made no response.

_"What do you want?"_

No response. Locke hitched himself out on his crutches and slammed the door. He simply couldn't bear not to know what was going on. Henry would have to remember that for the future. What a man couldn't stand was so easy to use against him.

He read again and slept again. Cortez brought food in again and took the uneaten food away, first standing and staring at him as he pretended to sleep. Locke was stumping about outside, or it would have been an opportune time. He could wait.

Some time later, the usual alarm blipping turned into the real alarm he had heard once before. He wondered what was going on, but it presently stopped. He was sitting, just for a change, on the low bit of ledge between the waist-high ledge and the far wall of the armory, nearly nodding off into sleep again. He heard Shephard's voice.

"When was the last time you went in to see him?"

Cortez answered. They must be sitting right outside the door. It was funny that Cortez had suddenly become his keeper. Was it because she was a cop? "Couple hours ago. He was sleeping."

"Did he eat?"

"Nope. It's two days now. No food, no water, nothing to say."

"I don't know about you, but I'm tired of waiting."

_That's one of your problems, Shephard. You lack patience._

The door opened. He was fully awake now and stared fixedly at the opposite wall as Shephard came in with his backpack. With his peripheral vision, he could barely see Cortez standing in the doorway, arms crossed. Shephard sat down on the cot across from him.

"I hear you've lost your appetite."

He didn't move, respond, look at him.

"OK, don't talk. I was never that good at bedside manner anyway." (Was he attempting a joke, thinking Henry would laugh?) "I'm going to change that dressing on your shoulder. If you try anything, we've got a problem."

He wasn't about to give him a fight. He had no reason to fight Shephard, and anyway, there had been more blood loss over the last two days, thanks to Jarrah and his medieval methods.

Shephard rose and put his bag on the ledge, removed bandages and antiseptic. Cortez was still watching. Shephard reached out to the front bandage and tore it off with a sharp jerk. Henry winced with a sharp intake of breath, but he didn't stop staring blankly.

"So, Henry." He gave a slight, dry laugh. _"Henry._" He poured antiseptic on a cloth. "I was thinking about something you were saying, before we found out who you are."

_You have no idea who I am._

Shephard leaned over him with the cloth. "This is gonna sting," he said with flat irony, as if he knew it would do much more than sting.

It did. When he pressed it to the front of the wound and knives went through his shoulder, Henry flinched and gave an involuntary sound of pain. He could feel himself quivering, but he didn't stop staring straight ahead.

"Yeah, you were saying that if you _were_ one of them, that you'd lead us into a trap." He closed the antiseptic, opened a packet of gauze bandages. "Capture our people, force a trade. Us for you. Pretty good idea, Henry." He gently applied a bandage. "And since you are one of them," (tearing tape) "I thought now might be a good time to use it. I'm going out to the line that we're not supposed to cross" (_The old Dharma line_, Henry thought with amusement) "and tell them that we've got you." _(You really think they don't know? You really have no idea how carefully planned all this was?)_ He applied tape and tore more. "And if they want you back, it's gonna cost 'em." He applied a second strip of tape and sighed. "And when we get Walt back," he said, putting away the tape and gathering up his supplies, "you might just have been worth all the trouble."

Henry stared at the wall with triumph exulting in his mind. All you had to do was plant a tiny seed of an idea, and people would seize it and run with it. _Oh, Shephard, all I have to do is pull the strings, and you will dance._ Of course Shephard's quest would be useless, because his people had a timetable he had laid down that they were carefully following. But oh the pleasure of making him uselessly carry it out!

Shephard was striding to the door when he let out a very soft laugh, barely more than an exhale. The doctor turned back.

"Did you say something?"

_I just want you to know how futile your brave quest will be, hero-doctor, not that _that_ will stop you._ He looked up slowly, shook his head. "They'll never give you Walt."

Shephard stared at him. "Which are you, Henry, a prophet or a martyr? Don't forget, they both end up dead." He turned and went out.

Score: Henry Gale 11; Survivors 3.


	21. The Plan

_The Plan_

It was almost worth having to give Walt up. The boy had such promise, such talent that they hadn't yet had time to investigate, but he was too dangerous to keep on the Island. He hated to admit that Juliet was right in her assessment, but Juliet had a habit of being right in her medical opinions. Richard, too, agreed with her, and though they did not have the closeness of relationship that they'd had when he first became the leader of their people, he still respected Richard's opinion and his communications from Jacob.

Anyway, it had given him an opportunity to be rid of the tiresome Michael Dawson and give himself a back door out in case his plan to approach the survivors resulted in being captured rather than accepted, as indeed it did. He had left explicit instructions and plans with Tom and Bea that if he did not return in five days, they were to coerce Dawson into returning to betray his friends by freeing him, in return for his son and safe passage off the Island. It would be a relief to be rid of Dawson. A perennial failure and blindly violent hothead, he was only on the list because he had managed to produce a child like Walt.

If he had not returned in the allotted time, his people were also to assume that the survivors would be hostile and that Shephard would have to be coerced as well into doing the surgery. Dawson, believing with a touching faith in their basic primitiveness and in the fake station they called the Door, would be sent home with the list of hostages, and he would give him the final word as to whether the second half of his mission was a go. So Walt was useful after all, if not entirely in the way he had first planned.

It all depended on whether Dawson would follow through. Henry was about eighty percent confident that he would. There was always a chance that he would lose his nerve, or lose his temper and kill the man he was supposed to release, but he had shown his determination to do whatever he had to do to get his son back. People really shouldn't be so transparent. If someone were to kidnap Alex, _he_ wouldn't be manipulated so easily. He could talk his way out of anything. He always had a plan, and his plans always worked, even when they had to be modified to fit ever-changing situations. Dawson would not be a problem.


	22. The Smile

_The Smile_

Music had been playing for a while, easy-listening '70s music that always reminded him of living in exile with the Dharma folk. He had taken up reading again, between sleeping and planning. For a while each new activity would distract him from his increasing thirst, and then the thirst, much more than hunger, would become the distraction, and he would switch to something else.

He heard Locke's crutches just outside and his agitated voice. "I need to talk to him!"

"The gun's with Jack," Cortez answered. "The door stays closed. But if you wanna talk to him, talk to him."

It gave him a certain kick of enjoyment to consider how Locke had given up ownership of his hatch to the cop.

The sound of Locke's crutches came close to the door, and Locke called, "Henry, can you hear me?"

_ We have already established that I have excellent hearing._

Locke rapped at the door. "It's John, Henry!"

He sat on his cot, listening in silence.

"Henry, did you enter the numbers? Did you push the button or not?" he demanded stridently. At the continuing silence, he pounded on the door. "Henry! I need to know! I want you to answer me!" He pounded harder. "_Answer me!_ Answer me, you hear me?"

Against the din, Henry felt a deeply satisfied smile come over his face. Sometimes there was nothing more gratifying than taking a skilled guess and finding it so dramatically right, getting so deeply under someone else's skin and into his mind and inserting his own small pins and needles in the places of vulnerability.

Locke's need to believe in _something_ and his need to be special were slightly pathetic and at the same time intensely irritating. How could a man like _him_ have such a relationship with the Island? It wasn't right. There was nothing special about _him._ The best thing about him right now was how easy he was to goad. How manipulable. How Henry could make him doubt himself and believe anything he wanted.


	23. The Killer

_The Killer_

Time faded, or it would do, if the alarm would stop going off. He didn't hear Locke's crutches for a long time. Presently more music startled him out of sleep. He wanted to shout at Cortez to turn it off, but he wasn't speaking, and his throat was too dry anyway. He considered cheating and sucking the moisture off the mango in the bowl on the ledge, but instead he turned his back on it.

Outside he heard Cortez say, "I pressed your button."

"It's not my button," Locke's voice answered.

"Where'd you go?"

"I just needed to…stretch my legs."

"Is that the best idea, with your leg hurt? Jack said you should keep off it for—"

"My leg is fine!" The record suddenly scratched and stopped playing.

"Whatever, man. Your leg."

He smiled again and tried to go back to sleep.

No more food was forthcoming that day, or night, or whatever sort of time it was, which must mean Shephard wasn't back with the gun yet. He wondered if he'd gone haring off into the jungle by himself with Jarrah's little gun or if he'd taken someone with him.

Many hours later, though, after the long silence (other than the alarm) which he had come to identify as nighttime, the door opened, and Cortez came in with a new bowl.

"Hey, Henry. What do you say? How long you gonna keep up this hunger strike, Henry?" She exchanged the bowls, and as she turned, he saw the gun was not on her. Outside he heard Locke snoring. Cortez leaned back against the ledge, stared at him as he sat blankly on the cot, and sighed. "Did I ever tell you I was a cop? I've been around a lot of killers in my life. Know what surprises me the most about 'em? How much they love to talk. But you're different, Henry. Hmm? Quiet."

_I'm so flattered. Stop patronizing, Cortez. You have no idea what you're dealing with._

He made a faint sound under his breath.

"What was that?"

He whispered again. All he needed was her in an awkward and slightly vulnerable position, but surely a cop wouldn't be stupid enough to fall for that. But Cortez moved forward a step and leaned over to him, his previous bowl still in her hand.

"If you're gonna say something, you're gonna have to speak up—"

Henry brought his bound hands up under the bowl and smashed it up into her face. She flew backward, bowl and mango raining around her, and as she fell back hard against the ledge, he vaulted up across the narrow space, flung her around, and had his hands around her throat. Dazed from the blow to her head, she clutched at his hands, struggled, but he was far stronger than she had imagined. Adrenaline helped.

"You killed two of us. Good people who were leaving you alone!" Let her think that was what this was about. Never let her think he was killing his own weakness, getting himself back on track with Jacob's plan, whatever that was.

Her knee came up into his stomach, and he gasped, but it only made him angry, which was a deep, cold kind of anger and made him stronger than ever. He lifted her up from the ledge and slammed her across the room against the wall.

"_You're_ the killer, Ana Lucia," he said with slow deliberateness.

Her eyes were beginning to roll up. He jerked her down full-length onto his cot and squeezed her throat until her hands on his relaxed, her face began to go slack. Only another moment—

His head exploded.

When the metallic, ringing pain rolled back into the background out of the way of the rest of the world, he found he was lying on the floor. He held absolutely still, trying to figure out what had happened. That hadn't been Cortez. He could hear her coughing and gasping on his cot.

"You gonna be OK?" Locke's voice asked. Oh. Of course.

Cortez didn't answer, still coughing.

"If you can stand, maybe you better go get some water and lie down. I'll tie him up."

"No, you don't," Cortez whispered hoarsely. "I'll tie him. You bash him with your crutch again if he tries anything. Maybe pick up the stuff on the floor so he doesn't get any shards of bowl for a weapon."

He didn't move as she tied his ankles cruelly tight, still coughing unpleasantly. She hauled him into a sitting position by his shirt and banged his head back against the wall; the metallic flood went through his head again, but he made himself loll without a sound. The rope went around the back of his neck again and around his already bound wrists, and then, by a metallic clink, he was told she had tied it to the ring in the floor. He still lolled limply against the wall as she stood up. She stood over him for a moment.

"I should have known better than to think one of _Them_ could be halfway rational," she whispered. "Get me out of here, John, before I beat him to death with your crutch."

Score: Henry Gale 11; Survivors 4.


	24. The Mistake

_The Mistake_

In the dark, he wondered what had gone wrong. Of course, few things ever worked perfectly, and everyone failed at something, even him, but usually if he wanted someone dead, they died. Look at Goodwin. All he'd had to do was send him off as a mole among the tail-end survivors and then harry the survivors until they were on edge and ready to kill. One thing he'd never told anyone was that his tactics with that group had been designed to that end. Goodwin's death had been a carefully orchestrated layer of events. He was good at that. Cortez should be dead.

It occurred to him, belatedly, that maybe Cortez wasn't supposed to die. Perhaps he had misread what he was supposed to do. That was disturbing. It had become increasingly difficult lately to anticipate what Jacob wanted him to do. When he'd first taken leadership, he'd been perfectly confident in his ability to instinctively know how to carry out Jacob's wishes, even if he'd never seen him. Richard's conviction that he had a special relationship with the Island had become his own conviction, and in the absence of direct communication, he'd always been adept at letting the Island guide his instincts. But gradually, the lies had had to increase. The first time he'd lied to Richard, he felt he'd betrayed the whole Island. Now just making it all up was perfectly natural. But it was all on account of Jacob refusing to speak to him directly. Obviously Jacob _wanted_ him to work this way. If it led to mistakes, that was Jacob's fault and Jacob's problem.

Still, he was so unused to mistakes and failure that he was decidedly annoyed. When he heard Locke's crutches outside and the lock clicking, he did not want to see him. If he had to see him, he was going to do his best to mess with the man's little mind.

"If you've come to apologize, I forgive you for hitting me with your crutch," he said to the dark, back-lit figure hovering in the doorway. He looked up slowly with a baleful expression. "I'm so glad my head didn't break it."

"Why?" Locke demanded.

"Now that's a broad question."

Locke snapped on the light outside the door. Henry refused to blink in the sudden flood of ugly florescent light.

"Why'd you try to hurt Ana Lucia but not me?"

_Believe me, I'd rather hurt you._ He said in a quiet voice, "I'm not sure I know what you're getting at, John."

Locke came quickly inside. "I was trapped under that blast door, helpless. You could've crushed my skull, but you didn't do a thing. Why didn't you?"

_ Do you know what Jacob would do if I killed one of his Candidates?_ He didn't even know, but he could guess. Nor did he even know what they were Candidates for. All he knew was what Richard had told him: Jacob had been investigating a large number of individuals for a long time because he had a special task for whichever one proved himself or herself worthy. Locke was one of them. Henry rather wished he wasn't. Still, it wouldn't hurt to try to put even more of a wedge between him and the other survivors.

"Because you're one of the good ones, John."

_What?_ Locke mouthed before asking it. "What? Good what?"

He looked away bleakly. "None of this matters. I'm dead anyway. The doctor's gone to make a trade. And we both know he'll come back empty-handed, and then…I've lost my value. So either Jack comes back here and kills me, or my people find out where I'm being held and they do it."

"Why would your own people want to kill you?"

"Because the man in charge—he's a _great_ man, John. A _brilliant_ man. But he's not a forgiving man. He'll kill me because I failed, John. I failed my mission." He tried to look small and heartbroken.

Locke was all intrigued. "What mission?" At last the truth was coming out. Not hardly.

"When that…woman caught me in her trap, I was on my way here, John." He looked up, his eyes large and clear, his voice soft and sincere. "I was coming for you." Because every good con artist knew how to make it be all about the target. Make the target feel special and important, needed. Locke had fallen for it time and time again, and he was falling for it again as he stared at Henry with wide, eager eyes.

_"Locke!"_ A female voice rang through the station, followed by Shephard's shout.

"Locke! Get out here! Locke!"

Locke moved quickly to the door but stood for a moment staring at Henry.

"Locke!"

"John!"

Before Locke slid the door closed, Henry caught a glimpse of Shephard and Austen dragging a figure across the floor. A familiar figure and, for the first time, a welcome one. Michael Dawson, unconscious. He looked down at his feet and smiled to himself. He would be getting out of here soon.

Score: Henry Gale 12; Survivors 4.


	25. The Guns

_The Guns_

He spent the next hours listening intently. For a while he could only faintly hear voices and decided they must have taken Dawson to the bedroom on the other side of the living area. What was wrong with him? He hadn't even had to fight to get away.

After about an hour the kitchen sink began to run and went on long enough that it had to be someone washing dishes. Then he heard Cortez.

"You're back!"

"Hey," Shephard's voice answered.

"So, the Others: they didn't show up?"

"No. Michael's back, though. What happened here?"

Now Locke's voice chimed in. "My fault! I left the tap on in the bathroom sink, and Ana went down and hit her head on the counter. And I'm sorry, again."

Henry sat up from the wall slowly, staring. He wasn't going to tell Shephard the truth. Was he trying to protect Henry from the hero-doctor's wrath? Did he believe the song and dance? But Cortez—

"Yeah, don't worry about it," Cortez answered. So she was on Locke's side? Was she, too, reluctant to yield to Shephard's authority?

"Jack!" Austen's voice called.

The conversation stopped with hurrying feet and crutches. They were all gone long enough that he theorized Dawson was telling them his story. It would be a careful mix of lies fed him by "the Others," which he wouldn't know were lies, and the lies he had been told to tell. He would still believe that they were primitive scavengers with control over one single hatch and a boat, led by a big, grizzled, rough man named Tom, a smallish group of mainly old people and women (and even a modern American man like him wouldn't know to imagine that the old and the women were among the toughest and most ruthless of them). His disdain for them would be real and believable. His lies would all be about what they could do about it. A small, rapid, dart-like operation, get in, get Walt, and get out. Unlooked-for and easy. Hopefully he was an adequate liar and could keep his head. He'd better, or he'd never get his kid back.

His hypothesis about Dawson's story was proved true when Cortez and Austen began a conversation over water running again, rehashing the story. He smiled at the details. Dawson hadn't much imagination, it seemed. Two guards, two guns, a hatch where the children were kept (a hatch that went nowhere, in reality, begun by the Dharma Initiative and aborted when their funding stopped), a ragged village of tents. It was almost enough to make one feel sorry for Dawson. They'd lived far better than that back when they'd really lived in the tents.

Presently Shephard's footsteps and Locke's crutches entered.

"Where are you going?" Austen asked.

"Get our guns back from Sawyer," Locke answered.

Shephard added, "We're going to need you to help convince him."

Henry sat up again from the wall. People really should learn not to discuss things outside their prisoner's cell. He _had_ wondered why there were no guns in this armory. But why should _Ford_ have them? No one would willingly give _him_ all their guns, certainly not Shephard, who had been at odds with him from the beginning, according to Ethan. It made perfect sense, of course, being completely opposite types, but there was also the added tension of the lovely Austen (Ethan had a good eye for these sorts of things), which would only make Henry's job all the easier. Austen was the one who could convince Ford of things, was she? But it didn't solve the question of why Ford had all the guns. Unless he stole them. Which was what he did. Stole things, hoarded them, used them as leverage. Henry could appreciate that—or at least he could if Ford weren't so stupid. He would be easy to make dance. Shephard was the difficult one. And he was the important one.

Shephard, Locke, and Austen went out together, leaving Cortez to mind Dawson. She'd volunteered. He hoped that didn't mean what he thought it meant. He hoped Shephard hadn't given the gun back.


	26. The Threat

_The Threat_

There had been no food in quite a while, not that he would have eaten it, before, but now that Dawson was here he really ought to eat and build up his strength for his escape. His shoulder had been bleeding again, but that was his own fault.

When the door opened, he hoped it was food. It hardly mattered what they thought of him anymore. His Henry Gale persona had been in continual flux. More inconsistency could hardly hurt.

It was Cortez, and she didn't have food, but she did have a darker look on her face than she had ever had before. She squatted down and slid her pocketknife across the floor toward him.

"Pick it up."

He stared at her and didn't touch it. Was she insane? She stood up and advanced a step.

"Cut yourself loose."

"What?" She was a cop. She wasn't letting him go.

"Just do it."

"Why?" She would have a backup plan, in case he rushed her with the knife. Her training would make her able to disarm him, but he didn't believe she would come in here and give him a knife without having a gun on her. But the darkness in her eyes…

"You know why."

_So you can kill me like a man rather than an animal? And feel better about yourself?_ By now she was good at killing. But perhaps not so good at justifying it to herself as he was. She felt guilty about the survivor Goodwin had killed. After she killed the man who shot her, her life had spiraled out of control, which meant she couldn't handle the implications of killing someone who needed to die. And he was willing to bet that she felt guilty about Goodwin too. If he could play on that guilt, he could keep her from killing him.

He inched forward and managed awkwardly to pick up the knife with his bound hands, opened it, and began sawing away at the rope tied to the ring in the floor. After a moment he stopped and shook his head, said with grim humor in his voice, "He kept saying you were misunderstood."

"What are you talking about?"

He smiled at her and went back to work on the ropes. "Goodwin. Yes, he told us all about you, Ana. How he thought you were worthy, and that he could _change_ you. But he was wrong." He closed the knife and set it gingerly on the floor to show he didn't intend to hide it about his person, his eyes intently on her. "And it cost him his life."

She was feeling the guilt. "He was gonna kill me."

He stood up slowly, not taking his eyes from her. "Was he?" He'd always been good at creating self-doubt. Charles was one of the few people it had never worked on.

Cortez's eyes were dark, angry, confused. "Are you done?"

"Yes, Ana, I'm done."

She pulled the gun from her back waistband and pointed it at him. He didn't bother to look surprised.

"So this is it, huh?"

"Yes, Henry," she said softly. "This is it." But she didn't cock the gun.

He held her eyes for a moment. "Do you sleep?"

_"What?"_

"Do you sleep at night? Since Goodwin, I mean. Before that, you couldn't have known what killing does to you, how it breaks something inside you. How you lie down with it and get up with it, you try to run away from it and it follows you and haunts every moment of your life."

"Shut up!"

"Don't worry, Ana Lucia. Someday it'll stop haunting you, and that'll be worse." He wondered if that was what it had been like when he killed his father. He couldn't remember.

"Don't you say another word!" The gun in her hand shook.

He stood and looked at her, let his face go loose and gentle, his eyes clear and unveiled. Not afraid, not vindictive, not angry, not triumphant, not defeated, none of the things he actually felt or that Henry Gale might feel under these circumstances. Just _I know what it's like to be you._ Which was only because he had a good imagination.

Then he closed his eyes. Which she could interpret as trust or resignation or courage or whatever she chose to interpret it as. He stood there for a long moment, an eternity, until he heard the door sliding closed with a slam and locking, and then his legs gave way suddenly. He leaned against the cot, very much as he had leaned against the bench when Jarrah had brought him in with an arrow through his shoulder, shivering.

Everything was going to be fine. The Island wasn't done with him yet. Maybe it let him get cancer, but it wasn't going to let him die of it. It had brought him a surgeon. It had given him the insight to know how to protect himself every time he was threatened. It would help him persuade Shephard, and then he would be back to normal, a strong, trusted leader. Everything was going to work out.

Score: Henry Gale 13; Survivors 4.


	27. The Betrayer

_The Betrayer_

"Where is everybody?"

That was Dawson's voice just outside the door. Henry tensed, sitting on his cot. If he was going to do it now, he had to do something about Cortez. He could think of a dozen ways to get her to leave, but he didn't know if Dawson was that innovative. _Don't be foolish, Dawson. Don't rush ahead of yourself, like you usually do. Plan carefully._

"What you said got 'em worked up. They went to get all the guns back from Sawyer."

"_Sawyer?_ Sawyer has all the guns?"

"Long story."

"Guess he didn't get that one."

"Yeah," Cortez said shortly. He wasn't sure if he'd heard her crying or not, before. "Too bad I can't use it."

"Use it on what?"

"We caught one of them. The Others. He's locked up in there."

"How long has he—"

"Over a week."

"And you're, what, taking care of him?"

"He tried to kill me today. So I wanted him dead." There were definitely tears in her voice. "I couldn't do it! I couldn't even kill him. I looked at him, and he…" The rest was indistinct.

Dawson's voice came closer to the door. "Then let me do it. They're animals. I seen these people, and they are—_animals!"_ There was real conviction and fury in his voice. He'd believed the playacting. "They took my son, right out of my hands—they took my son, and… I'll do it. Give me the gun. I'll kill him. 'Cause that's what they'd do!"

There was a moment of silence.

Dawson's voice again. "What's the combination?"

"Eighteen right, one left, thirty-one right."

Another pause.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" Cortez asked.

There was a gunshot. Henry jerked upright. _No!_ Dawson couldn't succeed at what _he'd_ failed at! He couldn't have killed Cortez!

_"Michael?"_

He couldn't place the new voice, but it didn't matter, because two more shots rang out and stopped it. Henry had to feel a kind of grudging respect for the man. Killing your own friends was hard. He should know. He had done it for his people, for the Island. Dawson was doing it for his son. Very much the same sort of feeling.

_Now get that door open before someone else comes, you fool!_

The silence had dragged on maddeningly long, but finally heavy footsteps approached the door. It opened, and Dawson came in slowly. His face combined shock with fury. Henry stood up slowly and looked at him. He had taken care that Dawson should never see him. He didn't know he was "the Others'" leader. There was a certain danger that he'd let his emotions take over and try to shoot him instead of letting him go. Henry was prepared to deal with that, to make a flying tackle and seize the gun. Dawson wouldn't expect that, not out of a pathetic little figure like him.

But then he saw that Dawson was trembling violently. Fear, not anger. But determination as well. The gun came up in the shaking hand. Dawson pointed it back toward his own shoulder and pulled the trigger.


	28. The Escape

_The Escape_

When the bullet went through his shoulder, Dawson screamed. Henry darted forward and grabbed the gun from his hand, put the safety on, stuck it in his pocket, and caught him before he fell.

"Let's get you out of here. You can't get any blood in here. Ana Lucia let me out, and I got your gun and shot her and you and the other person. Lie down on the floor here. This is where I shot you."

"Libby," Dawson said between his teeth, lying on the floor trembling and groaning.

"What?"

"Her name is Libby."

"Was Libby. You killed her. And I didn't ask you to do that, or Ana Lucia! You got that? This is your responsibility." He stopped and stared at Cortez slumped on the couch with a surprisingly small amount of blood on her shirt, almost put his hand out and pushed hair back from her forehead but stopped himself. _I thought you were supposed to live. Well, that's the Island for you, Ana Lucia._

"You tell them I kept my part of the bargain!" Dawson raged at him. "You tell them I get my son back!"

"You kept half of your side of the bargain. When you bring Shephard, Austen, Ford, and Reyes to us, you'll get Walt back. Those four and no others." And John Locke. He'd be seeing Locke again. He wasn't finished with him yet.

"I don't know how—"

"That's your problem. Just do it. Walt is waiting for you."

He stepped around Dawson and hurried into the pantry. He had to have food and water. He couldn't run across the Island in this state. Dharma granola bars went into a cereal box he emptied onto the floor, a chocolate bar, a small jar of peanut butter, a packet of crackers, anything with protein and energy. There were water bottles too, and he grabbed one, drank nearly the entire thing, and took a full one. He ran back out.

"Which way is the door?"

Dawson pointed weakly. Henry nodded to him.

"Thank you, Michael."

It was early evening, dusk rapidly approaching in the jungle. That would make it easier for him. He was wearing a bright orange shirt, after all. He should have thought of that a week and a half ago.

He ran through the trees until he was trembling and lightheaded from exhaustion and hunger, then found a densely thicketed clump of underbrush against rocks and crawled inside. He only let himself eat a little, a granola bar and more water, and then he rested until darkness had completely fallen. There were no sounds other than the usual evening jungle noises. A bright moon had risen. He ate crackers dipped in peanut butter and started off again.

No one knew this jungle like he did, except Richard. He went rapidly in the moonlight, occupying his mind with refining his plans for Shephard, Austen, and Sawyer, ignoring the image that hovered in the back of his mind, of two young women with bullet holes in them. They were casualties of war, like Horace and all the others had been. In Jacob's grand scheme of things, they didn't matter. He'd won. The survivors had lost two points when Dawson shot them. But he couldn't quite see fit to award the points to himself. No one had won anything by their deaths, by the death of Cortez and that of an unimportant young woman named Smith. Certainly not Henry Gale.

It was only when he was striding into the Barracks late the next day that Ben realized he didn't have to be Henry Gale any longer. He was glad to leave him behind.

_The End_


End file.
